BRUSSELS: A woman was killed and two people were injured when a large Christmas tree fell over during Storm Pia in the Belgian city of Oudenaarde on Friday.

Security camera footage on Belgian news media showed a brightly lit 20-metre high Christmas tree slowly leaning over, then collapsing next to a Christmas market as a merry-go-round turned in the historic town square.

A spokesman for the Oost-Vlaanderen province prosecutor said the victim was a 63-year old woman from Oudenaarde. Two women from the same town were lightly injured in the incident.

“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 United Kingdom and the Netherlands, also hit western Belgium, where the weather service issued a yellow code warning for the 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, her employer healthcare organisation ZoZijn said.

Published in Dawn, December 24th, 2023