A car plunged into the Meuse on Tuesday evening, on the left bank of Waulsort, towards Hastière. Despite the intervention of divers from two rescue zones, operations had to be interrupted due to the high flow of the river. A search operation will be carried out this Wednesday morning by Civil Protection.
The hope of finding any victim alive is “zero”, estimate the emergency services in the Dinaphi area. After the incident, the priority was to find the car. Civil Protection will therefore carry out the search after sunrise to make the work of divers easier. However, we still do not know the number of potential victims.
“The priority is to find the people and return them to the families, and secondly, the wreck must be evacuated because they are waterways“, explains Lieutenant Patrice Liétart, spokesperson for the Dinaphi rescue zone.
Firefighters located the car on Tuesday evening, divers from the Dinaphi zone and the Nage zone went into the water to attempt a rescue, to no avail. The car is completely submerged. “Unfortunately, they had to stop, the diving conditions are extremely dangerous, because the flow of the Meuse is much too great”deplores Patrice Liétart. The flow of the Meuse was 385 m³, “beyond 220 m³, it is extremely dangerous“, he reports.
According to firefighters, a car traveling at high speed fell into the Meuse this Tuesday evening. “It was traveling on the left bank of Waulsort towards Hastière, specifies Lieutenant Patrice Liétart, who specifies that the fall occurred “shortly before the Hastière bridge. The damage to the safety rails is “relatively substantial“, forty meters of barrier would have been torn down.
Around 10 p.m., the emergency services, who did not know the number of people on board the vehicle, were waiting for reinforcements from Civil Protection in order to free the car from the water. The medical team has left the scene, a sign that there is no longer any hope of finding anyone alive.
hastière car in the Meuse accident Meuse river
