Some 70,000 households in the Rhône-Alpes remained without power Sunday at midday after the heavy snowfall that hit Thursday six departments in the region, said Enedis. They were 115,000 Saturday late afternoon. "More than 80% of homes have recovered electricity through the mobilization of Enedis teams and companies working and pruning partners from all over France," added in a final bulletin the electricity network manager.
"We adapt according to the specificities"
The areas that remain without power are still located in the Drôme, Isère, Ardèche, Loire and Rhône, where some 2,200 agents and several hundred generators have been deployed. "It's difficult today to communicate an end of crisis," responded AFP a spokesman for the company, questioned about the possibility of a return to normal. "One adapts according to the specificities (note: geographical) of the territories (...) On the zone concerned, the last one that one had so many problems, it was for the storm of 1999", a- he added.
No other case of carbon monoxide poisoning with extra appliances or generators, was reported Sunday by firefighters for people who wanted to get warm for lack of power. Saturday in Isère, eight people including a couple of 82 and 75 years, had been rescued in absolute urgency Friday night at Lieudieu. In Ardèche and Drôme, it is nearly twenty people including five children who were hospitalized for headaches and vomiting.
Gradual recovery of train traffic
Thursday, the Ardèche, the Rhone, the Loire, Isère and Drôme, but also the Ain and the Burgundy department of Saone-et-Loire, had been placed in orange vigilance snow-ice. The early snow, which had then fallen in quantity on these departments, is heavy, full of water and damaged many power lines by throwing some on the ground. At the height of the crisis, 330,000 households had no electricity.
On the SNCF side, a gradual recovery in train traffic was taking place on TER lines that had been disturbed like the Valencia-Gap link. That of Valence-Grenoble is interrupted until Wednesday and the Lyon-Grenoble line until Monday (by then, possibility of passing by Chambéry to make the connection).