LISBON – Two men died on Saturday 31 January in separate falls in Portugal while repairing roofs damaged by Storm Kristin earlier this week.
The storm’s hurricane-force winds struck central and northern Portugal overnight Tuesday, killing five people, causing flooding and widespread property damage.
With more heavy rain forecast to hit the region starting Sunday, many residents in the worst affected area were racing to repair their properties to prevent further damage.
A 73-year-old man died after falling from a roof while replacing tiles in the town of Batalha near the hard-hit central city of Leiria, local officials said.
Another man plunged to his death while fixing a roof in Alcobaca, the mayor of the central city, Herminio Rodrigues, wrote in an Instagram post without giving details about the victim.
“We urge the public not to risk their lives when dealing with situations of this kind without technical knowledge or proper safety conditions,” he added.
The national weather agency, IPMA, has placed all of mainland Portugal on alert until Monday for heavy rain accompanied by winds of up to 100 kmh (60 mph).
With rivers already swollen and the soil waterlogged, Portugal’s civil protection service warned the fresh rainfall could cause flash flooding in urban areas and trigger landslides and rockfalls.
Prime Minister Luis Montenegro on Thursday declared a state of calamity, one peg below a state of emergency, for the hardest-hit areas, giving authorities the power to enforce safety measures and coordinate emergency responses.
He has called a cabinet meeting for Sunday to address the recovery plans for affected areas and response measures to the fresh rain, his office said in a statement.
Some 198 000 customers were still without power Saturday afternoon, mainly in central Portugal, according to power company E-Redes.
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