Scraping the mud, pumping the water, picking up the branches: residents and professionals rolled up their sleeves and noted the extent of the damage on Friday in the Center-East, the day after torrential rains of “unprecedented” violence.
“The work that needs to be done: it’s a mountain,” noted at the start of the morning Aurélie Baïba, employed in Annonay, the sub-prefecture of Ardèche, whose center was submerged on Thursday.
Since then, the water has receded and the traders, brooms in hand, tried all day to get rid of the mud and tree branches carried by the water, while a backhoe loader cleaned the road.
Red vigilance has been lifted in the six affected departments (Rhône, Loire, Haute-Loire, Ardèche, Lozère and Alpes-Maritimes), but five in the South remain affected by orange flood vigilance, according to Météo-France.
France had not experienced “an episode of such violence in the Cévennes for 40 years”, noted Prime Minister Michel Barnier. The firefighters carried out a total of more than 2,300 interventions and helped “save lives”, he added.
Three minor injuries were recorded. In Paris, a tree fell on a family, whose father did not survive, without the link with bad weather being formally established.
“In Ardèche, yesterday’s episode is indeed the most intense ever recorded over two days since the beginning of the 20th century,” confirmed Météo-France, which noted an “unprecedented” level of nearly 700 mm in the village by Meyres.
– “We will have to empty the mud” –
A thousand people were evacuated and some spent the night in accommodation centers opened by the authorities.
Achille, a 57-year-old Congolese, was housed in the gymnasium of a school in Grigny, south of Lyon. “They organized themselves to give us small beds, thermal blankets, water, chips, anything that would amuse our mouths,” he told AFP.
Nearly 3,000 firefighters and law enforcement remained mobilized on Friday. A gendarmerie helicopter made reconnaissance flights over the disaster areas to assess the damage.
In Annonay, Pierre-Laurent Barbe, insurer, came to “take stock” with the center’s traders about the damage suffered, but also “to comfort them”. “They try to be positive, to say to themselves ‘we were lucky there were no deaths, no injuries’,” he reports.
In the shops, everyone is busy sorting what can be saved. Muddy belongings and objects were taken out of the premises and placed on the sidewalks, like junk.
Jérôme Odouard “lost everything” in his jewelry workshop. “The cellars are underwater, we’re waiting for the pump, then we’ll have to empty the mud…”
The clean-up promises to be particularly heavy in Limony, among the most affected municipalities in Ardèche, where tree trunks hit a stone bridge diverting the course of a river towards the village.
Visiting the site, the Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher assured that the government would move quickly to the declaration of natural disaster, which triggers insurance, but also to “the mobilization of funds for goods which are not insured.”
In the longer term, “we must collectively adjust our level of play” to respond to climate change, she continued.
– A47 reopened Saturday –
Some 300 homes are still without electricity, according to a report from Enedis at the end of the day.
On the eve of the All Saints’ Day holidays, schools did not open in Ardèche, in 52 municipalities in the Rhône and 39 in the Loire.
The A47 motorway, closed at Givors, south of Lyon, will reopen on Saturday at 6:00 a.m., in time for vacation departures, declared Minister Delegate for Transport François Durovray visiting the Rhône.
Train traffic has resumed along the coast in the Alpes-Maritimes and Occitanie, but remains suspended between Lyon and Saint-Etienne due to significant damage to infrastructure, according to SNCF.
A partial resumption on the Lyon-Givors section is “planned for Monday”, specified the company.
In the Loire, in the very affected Gier valley, nearly 80,000 residents are invited to boil their drinking water.
The rest of the country, where the soils are waterlogged after a particularly rainy month of September, has also suffered. In the south of Yvelines, around fifty people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night.
In Eure-et-Loir, affected by the Kirk depression last week, certain municipalities once again found themselves with their feet in the water. “In Epernon, we have three rivers that come together, at least two have burst their banks,” explains Mathieu Ana, communications manager at the town hall. “It’s less strong than last week but since everything is already under attack…”
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