1:06 p.m.: Nearly 3,000 firefighters remain mobilized on Friday, as well as law enforcement officers. A gendarmerie helicopter makes reconnaissance flights over the disaster areas to assess the damage.
In the shops of Annonay, traders are busy sorting what can be saved. Muddy belongings and objects were taken out of the premises and placed on the sidewalks, like junk.
The government will declare a state of natural disaster “as quickly as possible”, which allows insurance to be activated, the Minister responsible for everyday security, Nicolas Daragon, assured France Info, referring to around “ten days”.
11:26 a.m.: Update on the situation this morning
It is time for cleaning and recession on Friday after the damage caused the day before in many municipalities in the Center-East by exceptional rains which reached up to 700 millimeters in Ardèche. The red “flood” or “rain-flood” vigilance has been lifted in the six affected departments (Rhône, Loire, Haute-Loire, Ardèche, Lozère and Alpes-Maritimes), but 10 in the southern half remain affected by orange vigilance , indicated Météo-France in its 10:00 a.m. bulletin.
This “rainy episode requiring special monitoring due to its intensity and duration” will again affect Friday morning “a large part of the former Midi-Pyrénées region, progressing slowly towards the south”, specifies Météo France, predicting “a loss of intensity during the afternoon”.
More than a thousand people have been evacuated since Thursday, including 25 airlifted by firefighters, and some spent the night in accommodation centers opened by the authorities.
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. Nearly 3,000 firefighters remain mobilized on Friday, as well as law enforcement officers. A gendarmerie helicopter must carry out reconnaissance over the disaster areas to assess the damage.
10h18: Emergency services carried out 2,300 interventions during the bad weather which struck the Center-East on Thursday, the most violent episode in the Cévennes “in 40 years”, and thus made it possible to “save lives”, noted Friday Prime Minister Michel Barnier .
The head of government expressed his “solidarity and support” to the victims of the bad weather, following a visit to the Operational Center for Interministerial Crisis Management, alongside Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau.
He assured that “priority” would be given to the restoration of road and rail traffic between Saint-Etienne and Lyon, specifying that the Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy Agnès Pannier-Runacher and the Minister Delegate for Security, Nicolas Daragon, would go “today even in Ardèche and the Loire”.
“We must prepare with climate change to face risks and disasters in all areas more and more often,” recognized the Prime Minister who called on EU countries to anticipate and prepare “ together” these climate crises.
10:10 a.m.: Météo France is updating its vigilance map this morning. 10 departments remain on orange rain-flood or flood alert. “Significant floods spreading on the Rhône from Avignon to the sea and the Loire Forézienne. Significant floods during high tides downstream of the Adour and the Nive. Long-lasting rains in the South-West”, explains Météo-France in its bulletin.
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10h09: Prime Minister Michel Barnier is currently at the Operational Center for Interministerial Crisis Management with Bruno Retailleau
08:56: After bad weather in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, “4,000 homes” are still affected, Enedis announced this morning. In detail: 1,900 households are affected in the Loire, 600 in the Rhône, 500 in Ardèche and 500 in Haute-Loire. Enedis tells franceinfo that “the situation remains evolving”.
06:05: All red alerts are lifted this Friday morning but 18 departments remain on orange alert. The Cévennes episode is over. A few showers are still possible, but not comparable to the rainy episode of the last two days.
– In the Alpes Maritimes and the Var: the possible stormy showers today no longer justify maintaining the orange level.
– In the South-West departments on orange alert: particularly long-lasting rains continue until the morning or even early afternoon. In total for the episode (started yesterday), we expect accumulations of around 50 to 70 mm in the departments on orange alert, locally 70 to 100 mm from the Causses du Quercy to the Tarn plain via the north west Aveyron.
– In Center Val-de-Loire and the Paris basin, some precipitation is still possible, but no longer justifies maintaining the orange level.
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05:38: The fall of a tree in the north of Paris (19th arrondissement), hit by heavy rains on Thursday, left one dead and two injured, AFP learned from a police source. A tree fell in the early evening on the road as a man and two children passed by, “in circumstances which will be established and in the context of bad weather”, this source told AFP. The man was seriously injured before dying.
The two children were taken into care in relative urgency, the police source further clarified. A medical-psychological emergency unit was on the scene.
05:00: full update at 5:00 this morning – Nearly 900 people were evacuated by emergency services on Thursday in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, where four departments are on red alert for flooding or high water. The Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Thursday described the episode of torrential rains which hit certain areas of Ardèche as “absolutely massive” and spoke of an “unprecedented situation”.
The town center of Annonay in Ardèche is flooded and schools and nurseries were evacuated Thursday morning. The flooded A47 motorway was closed between Lyon and Saint-Etienne and rail traffic between the two cities suspended.
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