Flooded basements, threatened homes, closed schools and shopping centers… A large part of southeastern France suffered an unprecedented meteorological episode on Thursday, October 17, with very intense and continuous rainfall.
“We have seen episodes of very heavy rain that last twenty-four hours in a row, but they never last with such intensity” testifies Jean Pascal, deputy mayor of Faugères, a small town in the south of Ardèche and president of the Ardèche Basin Water Union for a quarter of a century. After several episodes of rain last week, the soils are saturated with water, he explains. “ Suddenly, everything goes into the rivers. The three basins in our area are flooded. »
The event is exceptional due to its dimensions, both the volume of rainfall recorded and the geographical radius affected. Precipitation was 10 to 20 mm per hour, reaching between 400 and 500 mm of water in one night in certain areas, and a record of 630 mm in the mountainous areas of Ardèche.
“We are facing a situation unprecedented in its scale. Six hundred millimeters of water in the Ardèche is something unheard of to dateindicated Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister of Ecological Transition, during a press conference on Thursday afternoon. Six hundred millimeters is more than sixty centimeters of water that fell in 48 hours. It’s absolutely huge. »
The A47 motorway impassable
The departments of Rhône, Ardèche, Loire and Haute-Loire are among the most affected. Météo-France puts them on red alert for floods and floods. Further south, the departments of Lozère and Alpes-Maritimes are also affected. Dozens of departmental roads are closed. Between Lyon and Saint-Etienne, trains no longer run and the A47 motorway is impassable, submerged in several places.
In total, more than a thousand firefighters were mobilized in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (AURA) region, where authorities recorded 310 evacuation operations. On Thursday afternoon, 900 people were evacuated, two-thirds of them in the Ardèche.
According to the regional prefecture, no casualties or major damage have been reported. But the situation is monitored every hour. The prefect of the region, Fabienne Buccio, activated the defense operational center, a system based in the regional prefecture of Lyon, where all state actors meet to collect information and coordinate aid. Firefighters’ operational centers have activated their red level, in particular anticipating the massive withdrawal of personnel.
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