the collapse of a road in the Pyrénées-Orientales provokes emotion among residents

The landslide happened suddenly last weekend. In Amélie-les-Bains-Palada, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, the small municipal road which leads to Mas Pagris is destroyed over several tens of meters. A disaster which, fortunately, did not cause any injuries.

“No more road to leave or reach our house at Mas Pagris! The mountain took everything away! We grabbed a few things and took the slopes to get back down as long as we could. The mountain is collapsing everywhere!”

This former journalist is still in shock. Christine Allix suffers the blow almost a week after the collapse of the road which connects the house she rents with her family and Amélie-les-Bains-Palada. “My son was leaving for work. At 7 a.m., he called me to tell me that the road had collapsed and that we could no longer pass. When I arrived there, I saw his car but not him. I was very afraid that my son had been taken away. I was relieved when I saw him return.

The landslide could have occurred between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m., explains Christine, who makes the link with the internet outage. “At 1 a.m. we still had the Internet, at 6 a.m. it was cut off.”

Christine is one of the families who live isolated above the landslide. A few farms and a dozen people find themselves cut off from the world today. The road that collapsed is the only one that allows them to reach Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda.

Very quickly arriving on the scene, Marie Costa, the mayor of Amélie, is worried about this situation which is likely to last. “After the drought of the last three years, the heavy rains of recent weeks have weakened the mountain. The DDTM (Departmental Directorate of Territories and the Sea) and the RTM (Mountain Land Restoration Services) believe that it There is still a high risk of this happening again.” There is no question of taking the risk of people being injured.

The only solution is to take a forest track. This is also the path that Christine took. She decided to leave her home thanks to the solidarity of her neighbors who escorted her with their 4X4. “We just grabbed some emergency things and left. It's traumatic. But it's mainly the other owners that I think about, those who have the lodges and those who have the horses, how they are going to manage to hay?”

Emergency rehoused by the Amélie Town Hall, Christine is now thinking of those who have chosen to stay and for whom the return trips are a real hassle.

“Until now, these residents were 25 minutes from Amélie. There, via the forest track, it takes them an hour and a half,” explains Mayor Marie Costa, who has been studying the options for several days. “It's very complicated for the residents but we won't rebuild the road which collapsed, it's too dangerous and what's more it would cost at least 2 million euros. But the most important thing is is security. The DDTM told me that it could fall elsewhere.”

To provide a route back to the hamlet, the focus seems to be on the forest track, usually used by firefighters and which leads to Saint-Laurent-de-Cerdans. According to the mayor, “the goal is to stabilize the track, to arrange it, to tarmac it in order to make it a road suitable for vehicles. This would reduce their journey to 45 minutes. It's not ideal but better that than finding themselves at the bottom of the ravine.”

This forest track would therefore represent the only possible option to open up this closed valley.

While awaiting the experts' report, the Town Hall has already decided to start repairing the forest trail. However, the inhabitants of the hamlet will have to be patient before finding their way back to the village.