AFP
Thunderstorms: a woman killed by a mudslide in Aisne
A fifty-year-old died in a mudslide which also injured her partner in Aisne, after storms in the night from Wednesday to Thursday which caused damage in Burgundy and disruptions to air traffic. The water arrived suddenly around midnight in a street in Courmelles (Aisne), a town of 1,850 inhabitants near Soissons, residents reported. “A mudslide engulfed this area of around ten homes and accumulated particularly in a house”, mayor Arnaud Svrcek (without label) told AFP, specifying that “the facade of the house exploded”. “The gentleman managed to escape, with bruises on his head , but the lady was swept away”, he lamented, saying he was “in shock”. The water rose to more than 1m60 in the concrete block house built at the foot of the hill, noted a photographer from the AFP. The flow carried away everything in its path, leaving four gaping rooms on the street side and some pieces of furniture gutted on the road.”This morning when I got up early, I discovered lots of things on the road, an armchair opposite from my house”, says Jacques Dupont, 75 years old, living opposite the affected house. A neighbor “managed to catch the man” but the woman “left with the torrent”, reports the septuagenarian. “It’s really tragic.” Many firefighters were deployed and excavators cleared the rubble from the mud-stained street. According to the prefecture, it was an “intense and very localized precipitation event” which “created a phenomenon of runoff and mudslides”. Courmelles has been affected several times in recent decades by mudslides, the latest in 2021. The city had however never experienced a phenomenon of such violence , indicates the mayor, recalling that the soils are currently saturated with water after months of high precipitation. “With the weather phenomena that we encounter, the extraordinary becomes the norm”, he notes. The department was classified in orange vigilance for thunderstorms on Wednesday, like around fifteen others, by Météo France. The storms evacuated Thursday “in the Channel towards England”, leading to the lifting of orange vigilance, but nine departments of Hauts -de-France and the Grand-Est remain classified on yellow alert for storms until midnight according to the bulletin at 4:00 p.m. – As big as nuts -In Oise, firefighters counted 215 interventions linked to bad weather, particularly in Creil , Noailles, Lamorlay, many for flooding at home. The storms of Wednesday evening prevented around forty flights from landing at Paris-Orly and Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, and they had to be diverted in particular to Nantes, Lyon, Brussels and Liège in Belgium, the manager of Paris airports said on Thursday. Heavy rainfall caused “infiltration in several terminals” but flights resumed normally on Thursday morning, according to ADP. TER traffic was also disrupted on a few lines in Rhônes-Alpes-Auvergne on Thursday, due to flooding and falling trees, said SNCF. Traffic was temporarily interrupted on Thursday between Vichy and Saint-Germain-des-Fossés, in Allier , and slowdowns are underway in the Rhône west of Lyon. Violent hailstorms hit the region of Chablis (Yonne), an internationally renowned vineyard, causing “very significant” damage, according to wine growers. Wednesday evening, the area was crossed by two “hail-producing supercells”, according to Météo-France, causing in places the fall of hailstones sometimes as large as walnuts. “The shoots on the vines are still young and therefore fragile”, underlined the vice -president of the Chablis Producers Association, Frédéric Gueguen. “There won’t be a lot of Chablis this year,” says Arnaud Nahan, co-owner of the Domaine du Chardonnay, in Chablis. “hail chopped everything up,” he told AFP, noting that “in some places, we have 100% losses.” As the planet warms, the atmosphere contains more water vapor, increasing the risks of episodes of heavy precipitation in certain regions of the world, particularly in Western Europe.bur-pho-vid-cnp/bj/hj
