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Hundreds of firefighters mobilized on Saturday to find nine missing people after torrential rains and floods that destroyed homes and left isolated villages in the Nice region of southeastern France.
“We currently have a balance of nine missing people and three supposedly missing,” firefighters told the AFP news agency.
In the case of “allegedly missing” people, the authorities have only vague reports, unlike the other cases, in which witnesses or firefighters directly saw people being dragged away.
Among the missing are two firefighters and a policeman.
The most affected municipalities are in the interior of Nice, in the Roya valleys, in the Tende area and in the Vésubie valley, regions located in mountainous areas of the Alps.
“We have many houses that have been washed away or destroyed, cities like Saint-Martin-Vésubie are isolated from the world,” firefighters told AFP.
In this town of about 1,400 inhabitants, where a bridge was destroyed on Friday, firefighters carried out dozens of security actions during the night and early morning on Saturday, according to local authorities.
The telephone network is malfunctioning and communications are very difficult. Thousands of homes are without power, according to the head of the power company, Enedis.
Search helicopters tried to reconnect in the morning, but the cloud-covered sky prevented them from seeing clearly, even though the French meteorological service had raised its orange watch over the department and the rains had stopped.
Many roads in the region remain closed, either because they were destroyed or because of the risk of landslides.
The Nice region was severely affected in autumn 2019 by bad weather, which killed 14 people in two weeks in southeastern France.
In October 2015, storms of rare intensity killed 20 people in major flooding, especially in Mandelieu-la-Napoule and Cannes.
The municipality of Cannes postponed a ceremony scheduled for today to honor the victims of this tragedy.
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