After a tornado passes through several Saarland towns, helpers are on duty for eleven hours. Nobody was injured in the event, but drone videos show the extent of the destruction in a particularly affected street.
After a storm with storm, hail and a tornado in Saarland, the focus today is on the clean-up work. A tornado had passed through several towns in Saarland the day before and left significant damage to buildings and cars – roofs were covered. In total, around 40 houses and around ten vehicles were damaged by falling bricks or fallen trees in Urexweiler, a district of the municipality of Marpingen, as the district fire inspector for the Sankt Wendel district, Dirk Schäfer, said. Nobody got hurt.
Three towns were affected by the thunderstorm with gusts of wind, said a police spokesman. The storm raged particularly in the area around Urexweiler, a district of the municipality of Marpingen (district of St. Wendel). Media reports of a total of over 50 damaged buildings.
According to the information, the tornado passed through Urexweiler and districts of Sankt Wendel on Thursday afternoon at around 2:45 p.m. According to the fire brigade, the tornado left a path about 200 meters wide. The tornado was probably traveling with wind speeds of 150 to 180 kilometers per hour.
In some cases, bricks were thrown through living room windows. Power lines were torn down and the electricity went out at times. A section of Autobahn 1 had to be temporarily closed due to several fallen trees.
The fire brigade, the Technical Relief Agency (THW) and the German Red Cross (DRK) were deployed with around 100 people. The operation lasted around eleven hours. The helpers removed fallen trees and at least weatherproofed the damaged houses so that the residents could return. A country road between Urexweiler and Remmesweiler, a district of Sankt Wendel, was still closed on Friday.
The weather sites “wetter.de”, “tornadoliste.de” and “Kachelmannwetter” already classified the storm as a tornado, and a tornado trunk can be seen relatively clearly on videos.