Almost three months have passed since the evening of Friday February 2 in Excideuil, when local residents felt the walls vibrate in their homes and heard an infernal noise. The three enormous blocks of rock which fell on one of the largest roads in the town, the road to Thiviers (D76), did not move an inch. For weeks, local residents have been waiting to find out what happens next. The department gives a first response, in a press release released this Friday evening: the road will not reopen until at least six months after the start of work, scheduled for this summer.
“Several hundred thousand euros”
The community of municipalities will launch a call for tenders in the coming month to find companies capable of starting the work. But it is not enough to remove the rocks already on the road, they must be broken into pieces, and the vibrations risk bringing down the rest of the cliff still standing. We will therefore have to bring down 2500 cubic meters from the cliff before you can remove the 500 cubic meters of rocks blocking the road.
It took almost three months to announce the decision, because one question remained to be resolved: who will pay. Legally, the cliff is on the land of two private owners who must bear the entire cost of the work, estimated at “several hundred thousand euros” by the department. A price impossible for them to bear. It’s also not possible to declare a natural disaster: the cliff was insurable, so the State does not have to pay.
Communities will pay the majority of the bill
It is therefore the community of municipalities which will pay, with exceptional financial aid from the State and technical labor costs from the department. The community will swallow up almost all of its budget reserves there for the year 2024. Then, the department will pay to redo the road. According to our information, private owners should have a symbolic contribution to pay, but “discussions are still ongoing”indicates the department.
There remains the question of the three houses evacuated after the landslide. A protective wall will have to be built to protect the pavilion which faces the cliff, to prevent it from being damaged by future purges on the rocks. The department indicates that the town hall will do everything to “allow them to return to their homes as quickly as possible, including before the reopening of the D76”.
