BRITAIN TAKES A BEATING

Two drivers crushed by trees as more than a million without power | Government forced to issue its first-ever 'danger to life' text alert

- LUCY THORNTON

STORM Darragh's 96mph winds battered Britain over the weekend, leaving two people dead and more than a million residents without power.

Roofs were blown off and thousands of trees felled after people in the rare red warning area were urged to stay indoors amid the UK's fiercest storm in three years.

The carnage began on Saturday just hours after the government's first-ever "danger to life" text alert and continued yesterday, with more gales and heavy rain.

Paul Fiddler, who was in his 40s, was killed on Saturday morning after a tree fell on his Citroen van on a dual carriageway in Longton, Lancashire.

He was assistant manager at non-league Lytham Town FC, which described him as a "well-loved coach, football player, gaffer but, most of all, a true friend".

Hours later, another driver, named locally as Kher Hussain Shahin, was crushed in his car by an uprooted tree in Erdington, Birmingham.