BERLIN: The latest storm to hit Germany caused damage worth 500 million euros ($613 million), the German insurance industry association GDV said on Friday.
The storm, dubbed Friederike locally, swept across northern Germany on Thursday.
The costs incurred are well behind the last severe storm to hit Germany, Kyrill in 2007, which caused 2 billion euros in damage, GDV said.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn also put the level of damage to the rail network at millions of euros.
Repairs are necessary to at least 200 stretches of the rail network, Deutsche Bahn said on Friday, adding that no passengers or rail employees sustained injuries in the storm, named Friederike in Germany.
“The extreme impact of this severe storm are obvious: in many parts of Germany air, car and train transport were not possible,” Berthold Huber, Deutsche Bahn director for passenger travel, said.
Rail services resumed early on Friday, a day after the winter storm with gale-force winds hit western Europe and claimed at least 12 lives in four countries, eight of them in Germany alone.
Friederike packed winds averaging about 130 kilometres per hour (kph) during the worst of the storm, with speeds of 203kph registered at one point in western Germany.
The power of the storm prompted Deutsche Bahn to suspend all long-distance trains for the first time since Kyrill hit in January 2007.
The Netherlands also shut down significant portions of its train services as conditions worsened on Thursday.
Similarly, many airports suspended services out of safety concerns.
Some major roads remained closed on Friday, with the southbound number A7 motorway between Lower Saxony and Hesse blocked by fallen trees and unlikely to reopen before later in the afternoon, according to police.
German weather authorities lifted all storm warnings early on Friday. Gusting winds are still expected on Germany’s northern coasts and in mountainous areas.
All told, eight deaths were recorded in Germany, including two firefighters killed in rescue operations, three by falling trees, two when they lost control of their vehicles during the storm and one who fell off a rooftop.
Two deaths were recorded in the Netherlands, both due to falling trees or branches, police said.
Belga reported that a falling tree had claimed the life of one woman in Belgium, and in Italy, a man died when the winds blew him off a rooftop.
— dpa
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