A woman was killed and two people injured by a large Christmas tree that fell over during stormy weather in the Belgian city of Oudenaarde, authorities said on Friday.
Security camera footage on Belgian news media showed a brightly lit 20m-high Christmas tree slowly leaning over and then collapsing next to a Christmas market on Thursday while a merry-go-round turned in the historic town square.
A spokesperson for the Oost-Vlaanderen province prosecutor said the victim was a 63-year-old woman from Oudenaarde. Two other women from the same town were slightly injured.
“The investigation will focus on whether the tree had been properly secured and will also look at the impact of the weather,” he said.
Storm Pia, which disrupted traffic in the UK and the Netherlands on Thursday, also hit western Belgium, where the weather service issued a yellow code warning for coastal areas.
The storm also caused a death in the Netherlands, where a woman died of her injuries on Friday after she was hit by a falling tree on Thursday, her employer healthcare organisation ZoZijn said. Reuters
