The agglomeration of Pau suffered “heavy rainfall”, including hailstorms, which caused flooding and damaged several buildings without causing any casualties, the prefecture announced on Tuesday, with disruptions on the Pau-Dax train lines and Pau-Bayonne. The Pyrénées-Atlantiques prefecture reported “bad weather resulting in violent thunderstorms, with heavy rainfall and intense hailstorms”, overnight from Monday to Tuesday. The mayor of Lourdios-Ichere was slightly injured after a flash flood that briefly trapped a dozen people in a school, nine students and their teacher.
The department was still placed in yellow vigilance thunderstorms and rain Tuesday evening, awaiting a new stormy episode “with intense rains”, possibly accompanied by hail and “gusts of up to 60 to 70 km / h”.
Always Pau ⛈️�� @lacramyoara.ellena.ely pic.twitter.com/qnczSjo1p9
By midday on Tuesday, the emergency services had carried out more than 300 interventions in Pau and Orthez, with 60 firefighters mobilized. According to the prefecture, some 650 customers were deprived of electricity. Several buildings were flooded, including shops and hotels, the Pau Business School and the Orthez train station. The flooding of this station’s underground caused disruptions to rail traffic on the Pau-Dax and Pau-Bayonne lines.
A dozen TERs were replaced by coaches and four TGVs, traveling at reduced speed on the only passable route, recorded delays of up to an hour and a half, SNCF told Agence France-Presse. Repairs on the other taxiway, damaged due to a landslide of the ballast, were to last at least until the end of the day. In addition, a TGV linking Tarbes to Paris hit a tree that had fallen on the rails in the middle of the day, before the track was cleared, around 3 p.m., the railway company said, inviting its customers to find out about the train running status.
Floods in certain districts of Pau ⛈️�� @amaiabnl pic.twitter.com/ioyReP0FV8