Located a few meters from the Gave de Pau, a waterway crossing the city, the grotto of the Lourdes sanctuary was flooded last night around 2:00 a.m., according to David Torchala, the sanctuary’s communications director.
The Chapel of Lights on the sanctuary was also flooded during the night and the damage cannot yet be estimated.
The rest of the sanctuary is still open to the public, however, and pilgrims are present at the site, while the celebrations planned at the cave have been moved.
Across the department, firefighters in the Hautes-Pyrénées told AFP that they had “a lot of flooding” on Saturday morning.
The Hautes-Pyrénées prefecture described in a press release issued early this afternoon “a heavy rainy episode” which occurred last night, leading to “a significant rise in the water level of the Gave de Pau and the Neste d’Aure with significant material damage which remains to be assessed”.
From the same source, more than 70 people “may have found themselves stuck or in difficulty in the valley bottoms”, and were brought to safety by the firefighters
The Aragnouet-Bielsan tunnel, linking France to Spain, “will remain closed to traffic for an indefinite period” due to a “landslide” on the Spanish side, the prefecture added.
Around thirty people were brought to safety in municipal buildings by the emergency services, while around 500 people are without electricity in a town located in the south of the department, a correspondent told AFP.
Although the orange rain-flood alert has now been lifted in the Hautes-Pyrénées, the department remains on orange flood alert, the prefecture indicated.
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