A man stands in flood waters as another walks on an improvised wooden bridge in Cochen, Germany, on Monday

December 28, 1999
Web posted at: 5:56 a.m. EST (1056 GMT)

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PARIS (CNN) -- The swollen Seine River flooded many streets in this rain-soaked French capital, which was battered by the strongest winds in half a century.

A new wave of storms swept through France early Tuesday, killing 13 people along the southwestern Atlantic coast and bringing the death toll in Western Europe to 92, police said. Storms and flooding also affected parts of Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium and other areas.

In Paris, slabs of roofing of Notre Dame cathedral were blown off and a stained glass window at the ancient Sainte-Chapelle was shattered. Worst hit among France's cultural monuments was the royal palace and park at Versailles, where the roof was damaged, windows were broken and thousands of trees were torn down.

Paris officials have asked the government to declare the city a "natural disaster area," and Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot said extensive damage to the country's public transport network would not be fixed before year-end.

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"The damage is considerable," he said. "Road, rail and air routes are affected. We are really in great difficulty."

All flights Monday night to Bordeaux, Toulouse and Biarritz were canceled and train traffic was suspended throughout the region.

Following Sunday's storms which ravaged the north of the country, the second wave of devastating winds and rain hit several regions in the southwest, tearing up trees and blowing roofs away.

The new fatalities brought the death toll in France since Sunday to 57. In the north, torrential rain struck, but there were no immediate reports of fatalities.

In the Vendee region, on the western coast, more than 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes due to floods and spent the night in town halls.

At least two million French homes were without electricity, officials said.

Residents in many areas had to pick their way through streets littered with broken glass and uprooted trees on Monday. In Paris, traffic lights were bent, newspaper kiosks blown over, and cultural monuments damaged.

Some 60,000 trees were uprooted or damaged from the ground in two forests on the outskirts of Paris, and another 2,000 along the city's streets. Authorities warned people not to visit forests as many trees are still at risk of falling over.

The National Fund for Historic Sites and Monuments estimated that it will take between 400 and 500 million francs ($62 million and $77 million) to repair damaged cultural monuments.

Paris Mayor Jean Tiberi said urgent repair work would be done quickly, and predicted that millennium parties in the city, expected to draw millions of revelers, would not be disrupted.

The storms, which began before dawn on Sunday, wreaked havoc across Europe, disrupting travel by road, rail and air and stranding tens of thousands of holiday travelers.

Seventeen people died in Germany and 13 in Switzerland.

Thousands of homes in Switzerland, mostly in the mountainous Bernese Oberland region, were still without electricity Monday after fallen trees caused widespread damage to power lines.

In northern Spain, a gust of wind knocked down a wall under construction at a truck stop, killing two workers. Three people were killed in other accidents.

Severe storms off the coast of France are delaying attempts to clean up one of France's worst oil spills. Each day brings another wave of oil from the December 12 spill to the beaches of Le Croisic, France. The cleanup operation is a slow process.

Correspondents Peter Humi and Christian Mahne, The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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