Storm creates havoc in Europe, kills 27

BERLIN -- One of the most ferocious storms in years clawed northern Europe yesterday, killing at least 27 people, shutting down airlines and other transport systems in many parts of the continent, and uprooting ancient trees with wind blasts that hit 118 miles per hour in Germany.

In a dramatic rescue, a pair of British Royal Navy helicopters winched 26 sailors to safety after they abandoned the foundering MSC Napoli, a cargo ship, in the storm-churned English Channel. The vessel last night was reported by the British Coast Guard to be wallowing in 30-foot swells and drifting out of control some 50 miles off Lizard Point at the extreme southwestern point of Britain.

"Tugs are on the way, but they face arduous conditions," said British Coast Guard spokeswoman Julia Gosling by phone from Southampton, England. "The vessel has lost power and has suffered quite some damage to starboard."

Environmental activists and European Union officials have been raising alarms that global warming patterns might cause freakish weather for decades and even centuries to come. British climatologists predicted earlier this month that a combination of El Ñino patterns coupled with greenhouse gases building in the atmosphere could make 2007 a year of ecological disasters.

The death toll in yesterday's storm seemed certain to rise as fishermen caught in the gale from Poland, Latvia, and Ireland were reported missing and presumed dead. Britain bore the brunt of deaths, with seven people killed by falling limbs or storm-driven debris in gusts that hit 99 miles per hour.

In Berlin, the German capital, lights flickered, cable television was knocked out, and large limbs torn from trees smashed against apartment buildings, shattering windows and crushing parked cars. The city shook to powerful blasts of thunder.

Jagged bolts of lighting were counterpointed by strobes of blue and white on emergency vehicles. Fifteen hundred firefighters were pressed into service to divert water from flooding rivers in the capital.

German meteorologists named the storm "Cyril."

"It's most unusual because all the country is affected, not just certain regions," said Christoph Hartmann, spokesman for the German national weather service, DWD.

All day, as warnings intensified, Germans stocked up on tinned foods and bottled waters. Most schools were ordered closed and by sundown the streets of Europe's second-largest city were eerily empty after all citizens were instructed to stay indoors. In Munich, an 18-month-old child was killed when a terrace door was ripped from its framing and imploded into the house.

Ferry service was canceled from Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and parts of Scandinavia and Finland. Hundreds of flights were grounded at airports.

Eurostar train service between Britain and continental Europe was suspended after an electrical cable line fell onto the tracks near the French city of Lille, according to the Associated Press.

"Our country has not had a storm like this in years," the Royal Weather Service of the Netherlands said in an emergency statement imploring the Dutch to stay indoors. "We advise you to follow weather alarms and messages to the letter."

Dutch television showed bicyclists blown out of their seats or, in one instance, blown backward by the wind's force.

In Rotterdam harbor, Europe's busiest port, a container ship broke free of its moorings and crashed into an oil pipeline, causing 10,000 barrels of oil to spill into the water. Dutch television reported that the powerful stench of the crude sickened people as far away as The Hague, the Dutch capital, 20 miles to the north.

Also in the Netherlands, the eight-decades-old Wouda steam-powered pump, the world's largest, was fired up and pumping water back to the sea to protect low-lying Friesland province.

German radio said that more than 40,000 work crews and volunteers are on standby to clear what is predicted to be heavy storm damage.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cut short a visit to Berlin to fly to Britain ahead of the storm, but her plane landed in London amid gusts of 80 miles per hour.

In Britain, the weather forecast service said the country had not experienced such heavy winds across a huge area since 1990.

On the wave-pounded German island of Sylt, in the North Sea, the premier of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Peter Harry Carstensen, told German radio he was trapped by the storm. "This is an extraordinary threat to the island and its people," he said, as swells were expected to surge nearly 12 feet higher than normal.

British Transport Police said gusts tore large panes from the roof of London Bridge's railway station, leaving shattered glass strewn deep across waiting platforms. There were no reports of serious injuries in that incident. In Amsterdam, passengers in the city's Central Station were rushed from the concourse and trains were ordered not to enter the station after showers of shattered glass cascaded from the damaged roof, according to the Dutch news service.

Petra Krischok of the Globe's Berlin bureau contributed to this report. Material from wire services was also included.