Météo-France lifted its flood alert in the Var on Sunday October 27, which means that there is no longer any department classified as orange vigilant. The southern part of France has been hit by bad weather since Friday, which has caused widespread damage. “The episode of the heaviest rains is overwrote the forecaster. But there is still significant stormy rain at times over eastern Corsica. However, a “evolution of vigilance is not planned at this stage” for the Isle of Beauty, classified under yellow “rain-flood” vigilance, just like Gard and Hérault.
During the night from Saturday to Sunday, a 38-year-old man died of a heart attack while he was pumping water in his house in Vidauban, the Var prefecture confirmed to franceinfo. The news was announced a little earlier by a former city deputy, “at the request of the family”.
In this department, within an area located between Draguignan, Fréjus, Saint-Tropez and Luc, “We reached values of 300 to 350 millimeters of rain in two and a half days”added Météo-France, which represents around six months of precipitation in Paris. “The day [de dimanche] was relatively calm”confirmed the Var firefighters who concentrated their actions on Sunday on pumping and cleaning, an activity which should take them even longer “one or two days”. The floors remain “saturated with water but everything should gradually return to normal.”.
Since Friday evening, firefighters have intervened 340 times, including around a hundred security and sheltering actions, “mainly linked to the recklessness of people in cars who entered a flood-prone road”. The most affected areas are located around the Argens plain, the Pays de Fayence and the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. In this city, the water had threatened the storefronts around the port on Saturday evening, including the famous Sénéquier café. The municipal police had prohibited passage in certain places in the city center.
Largely located in a flood zone, many stores in the Fayence plain, in the east of the Var, were also underwater. Several roads remain impassable and road signs, sections of roadway and trees have been uprooted. The hilltop village of Callian suffered the most damage, several sections of roads were destroyed and a bridge was torn down because the Camiole river burst its banks again.
In the neighboring Alpes-Maritimes, firefighters said they had carried out 34 interventions, including “three people assist” and finalized on Sunday “drying operations of basements, cellars and ground floors”. Last week, Gard and Var had already been affected by heavy rains which affected a good part of the center-east of the country, causing exceptional flooding in Ardèche and the Rhône.
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