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Relief efforts continue on Sunday to help those affected, two days after “unconventional” floods struck southeastern France and killed two people in neighboring Italy. Helicopters have been mobilized to evacuate survivors, secure water and search for the missing.
“What we are experiencing is out of the ordinary. We are used to seeing images of similar disasters on other continents, and sometimes we feel that they do not interest us, but now it is something that affects us directly,” Bernard González, governor of the Alpine Maritim district.
Eight people are still missing in France and two in Italy, where there were also two deaths, according to the latest balance.
In San Martin Vizope, a village of 14,000 inhabitants, located in the mountains that are not accessible to cars in the north of Nice, tourists and residents gathered in the square waiting to be evacuated by helicopters, and a journalist saw a video in France Press that managed to enter the place on foot. A woman waited with her belongings on her shoulder after her home was damaged.
Helicopters of the police, the army and the civil defense have been mobilized, arriving at the affected places to evacuate the inhabitants, while the rain is expected to fall in the area again.
Civil Defense personnel brought rescue teams on their backs as they crossed a narrow path full of stones that collapsed due to bad weather.
On the other hand, it was impossible to enter the city of Bray Su Roia on the border with Italy for a long time, while the houses were covered with mud and the cars were overturned in the river, as a journalist in France Press saw.
“The people here lack everything, water, electricity, food. We need to fix the telephone lines as soon as possible, otherwise we will not be able to report what we need,” said its mayor, Sebastián Olaran.
As in the countryside of Nice, as well as in northern Italy, roads and water treatment plants were destroyed, while houses were washed away by floods.
‘An emergency’
“The situation is very dangerous. As in 1984,” the local president of Piedmont of Italy, Alberto Serio, told the Italian newspaper La Stampa, when a flood in Pau and Tarano killed 70 people. “The only difference is that 630 mm of water rained in 24 hours. We have not seen this volume of precipitation in such a short time since 1954,” he added.
In Ventimie, near the French border, traders were cleaning their shops, which were flooded with water and mud, as an AFP reporter saw.
The organizations have expressed concern about the fate of the migrants who often sleep in the Roya camps amid the intensification of violent floods.
The Italian regions of Piedmont and Liguria have asked the central government to declare a state of emergency. In France, the authorities put in place a “natural disaster” mechanism to cope with the crisis.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex made no secret of his “grave concern” about the final outcome of the storm.
Searches are ongoing for people who have been lost contact since Friday night in the Alpes-Maritimes, in addition to the other missing persons that have been announced so far.
“I want to send a message of hope about these people,” said the district governor, adding: “It does not mean that their families did not know about the news about them that were lost in the storm.”
On Saturday night 21 people were found on the French side, whom the Italian authorities considered counting the missing.
Telephone communication remains very difficult with various towns in the Nice countryside, according to AFP journalists.
And the provincial authorities announced the dispatch of military personnel, civil defense personnel and an employee of the district administration to help the mayors of these isolated villages.
During the night of Saturday, the authorities housed 200 people. In Nice, shelters were opened and buses and taxis were used to help those affected.
