Updated at: 0435 PST, Monday, January 26, 2009 BORDEAUX: French and Spanish rescuers scrambled Sunday to reopen railways, douse forest fires and restore power to nearly a million homes plunged into darkness by a violent storm that killed 21 people in southern Europe."The priority on Monday is to re-establish the electricity as quickly as possible," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy as he visited a town in the southwestern region that bore the brunt of Saturday's storm.The majority of the deaths were in Spain, where four children died near Barcelona when the roof and a wall of a sports hall were brought down on their heads by winds that in some places reached more than 180 kilometres (110 miles) an hour.They were playing baseball outside the centre in Sant Boi de Llobregat as the storm -- which saw 20-metre (70-foot) high waves battering the Atlantic coast -- gathered force and they ran inside to shelter.Witnesses said they heard a loud sound, then saw that the roof and part of a wall had crumpled."The entire population is shocked by this tragedy," Jaume Bosch, the mayor of the town, said on the municipal website.The storm was one of the fiercest to hit western Europe in a decade.It blew in eastwards from the Atlantic Ocean, barrelling across southwest France and northern Spain -- ripping roofs off houses, pulling down power lines and flattening hundreds of thousands of trees.
