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ENVIRONMENT

Mystery sonic boom rattles French Mediterranean island of Corsica

An unidentified sonic boom heard on the French island of Corsica and in Italy may have been a meteorite, experts have said.

Published: 21 June 2024 08:47 CEST
A couple walk along the seafront in Ajaccio, on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica
A couple walk along the seafront in Ajaccio, on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica. (Photo by Pascal Pochard-Casabianca / AFP)

Media in Corsica reported that the event occurred at around 4.30pm on Thursday.

It was also felt on the Italian island of Elba. The town of Campo nell’Elba said on its Facebook page that a nearby tracking station had, “captured a seismic, acoustic event felt by everyone” at that time. 

Tuscany regional government president Eugenio Giani initially said it was an earthquake, then backtracked after Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) ruled one out.

The Italian Air Force told Giani it had nothing to do with the sonic boom.

“The type of event which caused the tremor, felt by many as an earthquake over the entire coast of Tuscany and in some inland areas, is currently unconfirmed,” Giani wrote on social media.

The region’s Geophysics Institute and the University of Florence said in a joint statement that whatever caused the boom was travelling at 400 miles per second.

“A meteorite entering the atmosphere seems the most likely and in line with the data registered”.

The Corriere della Sera daily quoted an unnamed person from Italy’s civil protection agency saying, “the impact would have been registered by seismographs. The most likely hypothesis is still an aeroplane”.

It is not the first time mysterious sonic booms have been registered on Elba, the Corriere della Sera said. Similar events in 2012, 2016 and 2023 have yet to be explained, it said.

Member comments

  1. 2 years ago a similar huge sonic boom was heard across SE France. It was an air force jet from Corsica chasing an unidentified plane entering French air space.

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ENVIRONMENT

Homes evacuated as floods hit village in French Alps

More than 50 people had to be evacuated from their homes in a village in the French Alps as violent storms struck the south-east of the country.

Published: 26 June 2024 11:33 CEST
Homes evacuated as floods hit village in French Alps

Less than four years after storm Alex struck the Boréon area of the Alpes-Maritimes département in September 2020, leading to 10 deaths, it was once again hit by severe weather, as the storms combined with high-altitude snow melt caused the Vésubie river to burst its banks.

The 1,400-population village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, which was cut off from the rest of the country by the devastating 2020 storm, was again affected by severe weather.

Thierry Ingigliardi, the village’s deputy mayor in charge said: “Everything is being destroyed, we’re suffering the loss of roads yet again.” 

As a precaution, 52 people, including four children, were evacuated to a community hall.

But there was some confusion over the scale of damage caused by the flooding, after current Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, saying that bridges had been washed away in the flooding. 

“None of the bridges are threatened, two fords have been washed away,” Gaël Nofri, deputy mayor of Nice, clarified on the social network.

But at least two bridges have been damaged, leaving around 20 homes cut off, while two other structures are still ‘under surveillance’, as the local council reported earlier. The latter also deplored “temporary infrastructures that are not holding”.

Hugues Moutouh, prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes region, told BFMTV: “Everyone is annoyed (…) It’s been going on for months now, we’re using temporary structures.”

Moutouh says he did not want “to come here again to see how powerless we are” when seasonal storms known as épisodes méditerranéens return in autumn. 

The storms in the Alps led to ‘once-in-a-century’ flooding in the Vaud canton of Switzlerand. Around one month’s rain fall fell in just an hour and caused major flooding in the town of Morges, which stands on the banks of Lake Geneva.

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