IN PICTURES. Stacked cars, houses underwater, devastated football field… 10 years ago, these sudden and powerful floods in Hérault

10 years ago to the day, torrential rains caused floods of rare intensity in Hérault. The municipalities of Juvignac, Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone and Grabels (Hérault) suffered enormous damage. A look back at this particularly striking weather episode.

Houses under water, tangled cars, charred roads… 10 years ago, ultra-powerful floods caused enormous damage in several areas of the Hérault department. The inhabitants of Juvignac, Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone and Grabels were hit hard.

The bad weather is so bad that the Mosson overflows and invades several neighborhoods of Grabels in the middle of the night. Result : concrete roads do not hold up.

“When we arrive, there isn’t really any water, it’s already drained. People in the housing estate are cleaning, taking out their furniture” remembers Carine Alazet, journalist from France 3 present on the scene the next day. “It’s very calm, very silent.”

On site, firefighters try to identify people in danger: in all, 300 victims are counted in the town. A third is housed in a multipurpose room in the city. Here in this photo, some residents of Grabels see the extent of the damage along one of the destroyed roads.

Another impressive image: damaged cars, found perched vertically near the Mosson.

The water rose so high that it carried these vehicles down the river until it receded, eventually leaving them in the trees.

“This is what is most impressive about these floods” raconte Carine Alazet. “There is a pile of cars, one on top of the other, like a tidy tower.“

In homes, the damage is also considerable. Here, the living room of a Grabelois is completely turned upside down. Furniture and chairs litter the floor, as do shards of glass.

The water rose to human height, forcing these residents to take refuge upstairs. The water drains out by opening the doors little by little.

Nearby, to the west of Montpellier, these intense rains also damaged infrastructure. The Mosson stadium, for example, is completely devastated: the sidelines are bathed in brown water, the pitch is waterlogged and only looks like thick mud. Backhoe loaders are on site to cushion the damage.

“There was more than three meters of water, there are no more changing rooms, well there is nothing left, there is mud… Part of the lawn has gone into our beautiful sea Mediterranean, it’s a big scene of desolation” reacts Laurent Nicollin, deputy president of the club at the time. The stadium is unusable for three months.

At the height of the night of October 6 to 7, the precipitation reached nearly 280 millimeters in three hours, fortunately without causing any casualties.