The departments of Yonne and Saône-et-Loire remain on red alert on Tuesday April 2, according to a Météo-France bulletin, facing the “exceptional” levels of certain rivers while the flood wave moves towards the Burgundy.
The decline of the Armançon, a tributary of the Yonne, is well underway upstream, but the danger persists downstream, towards the north of the Yonne, noted journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP). In Tonnerre, where the water level already reached 2.75 meters in the middle of the afternoon, “the peak is expected around 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.,” Cédric Clech, mayor of this area, told AFP. town of nearly 5,000 inhabitants.
Between 100 and 150 people live in 80 homes located in flood zones, but only one elderly person agreed to leave their home, added the elected official, who, as a precaution, opened an emergency accommodation center and is banking on work carried out recently to contain water. In the sector, school transport has been affected, according to the prefecture, and nearly 300 homes are subject to preventive power cuts, according to Enedis.
The Côte-d’Or goes into orange vigilance
Towards Auxerre, the Serein basin is also on orange alert, with a flood wave expected by the town of Chablis, famous for its wine, “at the end of the day Tuesday”, according to the Yonne prefecture. In the city, the river was still very peaceful around 3 p.m., but its waters had largely overflowed an hour later, prompting municipal services to block several roads.
Further south, on the other hand, the decline is confirmed after a sudden rise in water levels, which surprised by its intensity. “We are used to this kind of flood but, at 3 a.m., it accelerated and then, there was a sort of blade effect which caused the water to rise very high. very quickly,” a resident of Noyers, a village located upstream of the Serein, told AFP.
” I have never seen that. We have exceeded the exceptional flood of 2013 by 53 centimeters and we are close to the hundred-year flood of 1910,” added Olivier Murat, mayor of Aisy-sur-Armançon, a village in Yonne with 250 inhabitants. The decline in this sector has made it possible to downgrade the Côte-d’Or to orange vigilance, but the department is not out of the woods yet: the waters continue to rise in the Ouche sector, a tributary of the Saône, which borders Dijon.
Some streets of the Burgundian metropolis were covered in water on Tuesday. “The flood forecasting service predicts levels of up to 3 to 3.2 meters at the Plombières-lès-Dijon station until the beginning of the night from Tuesday to Wednesday,” according to the prefecture, which has set up a crisis unit.
“Accelerated procedure” for recognizing natural disasters
In Saône-et-Loire, precipitation affected the Arroux basin, 36 municipalities and cut several departmental roads, according to the prefecture. Since Monday, firefighters have carried out 224 interventions, resulting in the safety of 64 people. The peak of the flood mainly affected the municipalities of Toulon-sur-Arroux, Vendenesse-sur-Arroux and Gueugnon on Tuesday, but “a slow decline has begun”, according to the prefecture.
In addition to Côte-d’Or, Aube and Haute-Marne remained on orange alert. On red alert on Saturday, Indre-et-Loire returned to yellow and is concentrating on “assessing the damage”. In Haute-Vienne, the search for a kayaker who went missing on the Vienne, which has been in flood since Saturday afternoon, near Limoges, was to resume on Tuesday.
The government announced that an “accelerated procedure” would be initiated for the municipalities affected by these floods regarding the natural disaster regime.