More than 150 000 Swedes were without power on Tuesday and police said another person was reported killed in fierce storms that struck northern Europe over the weekend, bringing the death toll to 17.
In southern Sweden, seven people were reported killed in the weekend storm. Police said on Tuesday that an eighth person was found dead and another remains missing.
Two British men swept away in northern rivers have been missing since Saturday and there has been no word about their fate, British authorities said.
Swedish utilities Sydkraft AB and Vattenfall AB said 150 000 households are still without electricity, and another 180 000 without phone service.
The country’s National Board of Forestry said the hurricane-strength winds felled more than 50 million cubic metres of trees, or about two years’ worth of lumber.
Four people were killed in Denmark by flying debris or falling trees.
Another 10 000 homes in north-eastern England were without running water on Tuesday because of the weekend storms that caused flooding.
Meanwhile, police warned thousands of homeowners against returning to flood-damaged properties in the north-western city of Carlisle because of contaminated water and damaged electrical cabling.
Three people died in the area after heavy rains and gale-force winds battered northern Britain during the weekend. About 13 000 homes in the Carlisle district remained without electricity on Tuesday, according to power watchdog Energywatch North West.
The weekend storm, which meteorologists say was among the worst to hit the region in 40 years, brought winds of 145kph that ripped roofs from homes and wrought widespread property damage along the coast. Insurers put preliminary damage estimates at tens of millions of euros.
In Russia, thousands were without power in the Pskov region, Itar-Tass reported.
In the Baltic states, power was restored to thousands of residents in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
In Latvia, where heavy gusts tore the roofs off many homes in coastal regions, residents went about repairing their damaged property even as they braced for what meteorologists are predicting will be another unusually heavy storm to hit the region on Thursday.
Estonia’s state forestry service on Tuesday estimated the storm toppled nearly one million cubic metres of timber, which could amount to almost $39,31-million in damages. — Sapa-AP