Part of the country remains on alert due to the risk of flooding linked to severe weather. Two departments, Côte-d’Or and Yonne, were placed on red alert at midday, Monday April 1, due to the danger of “major flooding on the Armançon”, Météo- France.
On this tributary of the Yonne, “the rises are rapid and strong” and the flood level “already locally exceeds that observed in May 2013”, according to the department prefecture. “In the absence of further precipitation, the flood peak is expected in the Aisy-sur-Armançon sector during the night from Monday to Tuesday,” she specifies.
Placed on red alert for part of the weekend, the department of Indre-et-Loire was downgraded to orange on Monday afternoon. “The decline is clear (…), the Vienne is declining,” declared the prefect of Indre-et-Loire, Patrice Latron, during a press conference in Chinon, considering the episode “exceptional”. “In the coming days, we will remain vigilant”, because “we are forecasting rain in the departments which border [ours], and this rain will affect the level of the Vienne”, he said.
The departments of Gironde, Dordogne, Charente and Charente-Maritime remain placed on orange vigilance, as do those of Saône-et-Loire, Gard and Bouches-du-Rhône. Almost the entire rest of mainland France is placed on yellow alert.
Numerous evacuations took place in Indre-et-Loire and Vienne, due to the severe river flooding which has occurred since Saturday in the center-west of the country. A kayaker is still needed.
The alert was given on Saturday, around 4 p.m., by several witnesses, who saw the kayaker “in difficulty” from the town of Aixe-sur-Vienne (Haute-Vienne), 10 kilometers west of Limoges . “They judged, from a distance, that he had difficulty controlling. It was from there that searches were launched over around ten kilometers, the secretary general of the Haute-Vienne prefecture, Laurent Monbrun, explained to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Like the day before, the searches carried out on Sunday “up to the border with Charente” by the gendarmerie, with a helicopter in support, yielded nothing, the prefecture said. They resumed Monday morning, in an area now in decline and without particular vigilance. The prefecture, however, reports the absence of “a report of a missing relative”.
More than 560 people evacuated in Indre-et-Loire
In Indre-et-Loire, the Vienne began to recede at Chinon at midday. Across the department, 562 people have been evacuated since midday on Saturday, including 370 in Chinon, the prefecture said.
In Gard, the prefecture announced the closure to traffic of 17 submersible bridges and lookout crossings, as well as numerous municipal submersible bridges.
In mid-March, eight people died in bad weather linked to storm Monica, which hit the south-east of France. Among them, six died in Gard – swept away while trying to cross swollen rivers by car – one in Hérault and one in Ardèche.
