Half a Million French Homes Still Without Power

A week after killer storms struck France, half a million homes remained without electricity Sunday, officials said.

The nation’s death toll rose to 88 after the bodies of a young couple were found in a house whose roof had caved in.

At one stage last week, 3.4 million homes had no power. The head of French power company Electricite de France said Sunday that restoring power in rural communities was proving difficult.

“We have to face up to a situation which is more complicated today,” Francois Roussely said.

The power company has said it will offer a year’s worth of free service to people who were forced to spend New Year’s without electricity because of the storms.

In addition to causing deaths and power outages, the storms ripped millions of trees from the ground across France. They also damaged cultural monuments, including the palace at Versailles and the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Meanwhile, an underwater robot monitoring the wreckage of an oil-filled tanker, whose cargo began to seep out during the storms, jammed and has stopped relaying images, officials said. A second robot will be submerged to try to repair it.