In the streets of Pomas, devastated by a tornado: 'It was like bombs were dropped on our heads'

“It came straight at us, as if it were targeting us!” It was 4:57 p.m. on Monday, August 24, and the village of Pomas (Aude department in southern France), with 1,000 residents south of Carcassonne, was experiencing an otherwise perfectly normal summer afternoon. From his balcony near the church, at the top of the village, Anthony Eden, 49, began filming the gathering dark clouds. “The sky was getting lower, the color was changing, and soon we saw what looked like a string dropping toward the ground,” he recalled. That string, shaped like a funnel, was a whirlwind that soon joined another, appearing to rise from the ground. “Very quickly, an enormous roll of clouds formed. It moved toward us with a noise like insects, or a muffled engine, at breakneck speed,” Eden continued.

The scene he filmed lasted five minutes. At 5:02 p.m., the tornado had dissipated, and the village was devastated. “We were in the town hall preparing the village festival, scheduled for Thursday,” recalled Mayor Hervé Giné (independent). “We’d just started five minutes earlier, but when we stepped outside, there was no village left. It was absolute chaos,” he said, his eyes still brimming with tears.

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