Woman dies as winds sweep her caravan over cliff edge
STORM Ali claimed two lives yesterday when a woman in her caravan was swept off a cliff and a tree crushed a country park worker.
The woman was killed in the west of Ireland, where her caravan was blown from its pitch on to a beach at Claddaghduff in Co Galway. Police said they were alerted at 7.45am. After a search, the body of the woman in her 50s was found and taken to University College Galway for a post mortem examination.
Two men working in Slieve Gullion Park, near Newry, Co Down, were crushed by a falling tree while they were carrying out contract work for Northern Ireland Water. One man in his 20s died at the scene and the other, in his 40s, was badly injured and was taken to hospital.
A spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland said: “Police attended the sudden death of a man, aged in his 20s, in the Slieve Gullion Park, Drumintee Road area of Newry, this afternoon.” She added that there were no suspicious circumstances and the incident was being investigated by the region’s health and safety executive. Storm Ali lashed Northern Ireland yesterday, where its 91mph winds were the strongest September gusts to be recorded there. The Met Office had issued an amber warning, forecasting flying debris and a potential threat to lives as the storm made its way across the north of the British Isles.
It caused power outages affecting more than 140,000 homes, farms and businesses, Ireland’s electricity supplier said, attributable mainly to trees falling on overhead lines.
Cheshire Police said a woman was taken to hospital with serious injuries after a tree fell on a car on the A49 near Crewe. The strong winds also led to a cruise ship slipping its moorings at Greenock, Inverclyde.
Power cuts and damage from flying debris and fallen trees were also reported in Scotland and Cumbria and there was disruption at airports in Glasgow, Dublin and Belfast.