September 18, 2023, torrential rains fell for nine hours on a diagonal from Vals-les-Bains in Ardèche to Saint-Sorlin-en-Valloire in the north of Drôme. The A7 motorway even had to be closed. He had fallen suddenly up to twice the amount of rain in an entire month of September : up to 275 mm of water in Saint-Jean-de-Muzols for example, establishing new records.
“The worst was the baby’s room”remembers Thibault. He lives in the new housing development “Les jardins de Lucie” in Andancette. “We had moved in two months ago. That’s when I cracked.” The muddy water had flowed down the street until it reached 50 cm in his garage and entered his house. “Just thinking about it, [cela me rappelle que] At the time it was really horrible.” After the flooding subsided, the insurer came to assess the damage, dehumidifiers combed the house, the parquet flooring had to be redone in his three bedrooms – the floor slab even had to be dried, says the local resident. “We were able to live [la maison] that at the beginning of January. At the beginning, we said one or two months – it will inevitably take time – but Four months later, it was a long time.”
Traces on the walls
On the perpendicular street below, Noémie (not her real name), mother of two young children, did not have to move. “We still have moldy walls”she says. She is not a homeowner and lives in a house managed by the social landlord Habitat Dauphinois. “We are still waiting for the necessary to be done. We were told in the spring, May-June or so, but [à ce jour] We got nothing at all, no mail.”
Contacted, the social landlord responded that in fact “The expert has ruled on repainting the ground floors ‘in the good weather’ to finalize the drying of the supports” but that “the painting service was ordered from a first service provider” and that “Faced with the lack of intervention despite repeated promises, the order was cancelled and entrusted to a local service provider.”** Habitat Dauphinois promises that The work will begin in the first week of October and that tenants will be contacted to set appointments the last week of September.
In Andancette town hall too, the floods have brought about changes in the commune. “It was necessary to do a change to the municipal plan [de sauvegarde, une carte des risques et aléas, N.D.L.R.] *: add this subdivision and that of the ‘*Magnolias'”, deciphers the mayor Frédéric Chenevier. On September 18, 2023, the Bancel River passed from 3 meters wide to 700The elected official hopes to see work on a dike arrive in his area as quickly as possible.
Preventive work takes a long time to implement
Construction projects near the banks of rivers to protect homes have existed for years. This is explained by Nicole Durand, vice-president in charge of water, rivers and sanitation at the Portes de DrômArdèche community of communes. The files take time to come to fruition: “You have a lot of back and forth between our services and those of the State. These are very heavy files” she asks. Some projects have been completed, such as those on the dikes at Beausemblant and Saint-Sorlin-en-Valloire. “Luckily, they were made there, last spring,” Nicole Durand specifies. And to regret: “It’s a shame, becauseA year ago, housing estates would not have been flooded. I’m not saying that we could have avoided everything, but we see that in the places we identified for work, there was a need.”Other projects are underway for dikes, river bed recalibration, draining or even road raising in Saint-Barthélémy-de-Vals and Albon for example.
The mayor of Lapeyrousse-Mornay also recalls that Individuals can protect their own homesShe emphasizes that The Pores de DrômArdèche community of communes, for example, finances 80% of this. the purchase of cofferdams, to prevent water from entering, with a ceiling of 3,000 euros per household. But also that a prevention campaign had already been carried out in the past to diagnose risks in homes, but that few residents had generally responded.
