Floods: three departments remain on orange alert until Sunday

The episode of rains and floods was of rare violence. But this Saturday morning, only three departments remain on orange alert for floods Weather France. These are the Pyrenees-Atlantiques, the Landes and the Puy-de-Dôme, which are also on orange alert for Sunday.

In question this Saturday, second Vigicruderiean “episode of high tides capable of causing localized overflows on the estuaries of the Atlantic coast during high tides” for the two departments of the South-West and a “significant flood on the Allier between Alagnon and Dore” in Puy-de-Cupola.

End of the Cévennes episode

The Cévennes episode, which caused unprecedented rainfall for 40 years in France, particularly in the south-east of France, “is now over”, indicates Vigicrues. “The decline is widespread in all the affected hamlets but remains slow and progressive in the alert hamlets” with the exception of Allier. “As rainfall in recent days has also affected much of the country, moderate flooding is spreading across many rivers placed on yellow alert,” the meteorological organization adds.

According to Météo France, light rain is expected on Saturday, especially in western France. But these new disturbances “will not be such as to cause a reaction of the waterways and the recession could continue”.

France has not seen “an episode of such violence in the Cévennes for 40 years,” Prime Minister Michel Barnier noted Friday afternoon. The firefighters then carried out a total of more than 2,300 interventions and contributed to “saving human lives”, he added. Three minor injuries were reported. In Paris, a tree fell on a family, whose father did not survive, without a link to the bad weather being formally established.

Video“Everything is ruined”: cars overturned, shops looted… the victims suffer damage from the floods

“In Ardèche, yesterday’s episode was in fact the most intense ever recorded in two days since the beginning of the 20th century,” confirmed Météo France, which noted an “unprecedented” level of almost 700 mm in the village of Meyres. Up to six departments had, at their peak, been placed on red alert.