Chilling security camera footage has emerged showing the exact moment a rare and violent tornado tore through the sleepy southern French village of Pomas, turning an ordinary Monday afternoon into what locals described as “the apocalypse.”
The clip switches between two CCTV cameras as a towering wall of brown dust and debris barrels across an industrial yard packed with metal pipes, trailers and machinery. Within seconds, the entire scene vanishes into the vortex. A second camera, pointing at a modest house with four white Renaults parked outside, captures the same cloud racing in from the right before the picture fills with flying wreckage and the lens is overwhelmed.
The tornado struck Pomas, a commune of about 1,000 people in the Aude department south of Carcassonne, at around 5.20 pm on 24 August 2026. Experts later rated it EF3, with estimated winds of 220–240 km/h (136–149 mph). It carved a 6 km path of destruction, beginning near the River Aude and cutting straight through the village.
“Half the village has been destroyed,” one resident told local media, comparing the funnel to “a huge red and yellow chimney.” Mayor Hervé Giné said it felt like “a wartime situation” and that the community had been “bombarded by nature.” Children had been playing outside the village hall just an hour earlier, preparing for a local festival. By 6pm the festival plans were gone and much of Pomas with them.
Thirty-nine people were injured, two of them critically. Among the victims was a pregnant woman whose house collapsed on top of her; she survived because a sofa shielded her. Another resident, André, clung to a kitchen door as the wind lifted his feet 20 centimetres off the floor. “The windows shattered. I was hanging on because I was flying,” he said. A couple due to marry in a month lost their newly built house and their wedding rings in the rubble.
Resident Christelle Perrier filmed from her terrace as the roar grew. “It was horrible, we almost died,” she said. Tiles, walls and furniture crashed down around her and her husband. “I thought we were going to die.” Another local, Chantal, heard what she first thought was a lorry hitting the house, then watched her roof cave in. “I thought this is my final hour.”
Roughly 300 of the village’s 476 homes were damaged; more than 100 were later judged completely destroyed. A 16th-century castle lost a third of its structure. Cars were tossed, trees uprooted and the village clock stopped at 17:02. Power cuts hit thousands of households across the wider area.
French tornado specialists at Keraunos confirmed the EF3 rating after surveying the wreckage – one of the strongest tornadoes recorded in France in recent years. The storm formed inside a supercell thunderstorm while the department was already under an orange weather warning.
In the days that followed, neighbours, firefighters and volunteers from surrounding villages began the grim work of clearing debris and covering shattered roofs with blue tarpaulins. Many residents remain in shock. “It was like bombs were dropped on our heads,” one said. “We will rebuild together,” the mayor promised, “but it will take years.”
The CCTV footage, now circulating widely, has been called some of the most striking tornado video ever captured in Europe – a stark reminder that even in a quiet corner of rural France, nature can still arrive like a finger of God.
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