One hell of a morning. It's 10:30 a.m. on Monday when Laurent, a resident of La Montagne, a neighborhood in the heights of Saint-Denis, suddenly sees the heavy metal roller shutter of his terrace torn off by a gust of wind and embedded in his bay window. It has been a few hours since tropical cyclone Belal swept down with all its power on the north of Reunion Island, which has been placed on purple alert since dawn, synonymous with total containment... including relief.
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"My father-in-law and I had to move a freezer and 500 kg of tiles to support the bay window and prevent it from exploding, otherwise we would have been flooded. Luckily, one of our trees fell right next to the car," says the 45-year-old kitchen designer, who is shocked, but does not lose his sense of humour: "With all the trees that have fallen, now I have a view of the sea from my terrace!"
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