At the beginning of October, the Alpes-Maritimes are entering a period "at risk" for bad weather with the Mediterranean episodes.
In 2015 and 2020, they were devastating with violent floods on the coast and the passage of storm Alex in the valleys of the high country of Nice.
How does the Côte d'Azur protect itself against these increasingly present risks with climate change?
The storm that fell on the Riviera coast last weekend shook more than the walls in the Alpes-Maritimes.
He recalled the painful episodes of October 2015 and the floods in Cannes, Mandelieu, Antibes and Biot which left 20 dead, and the passage of storm Alex in the Tinée, Roya and Vésubie valleys, causing the death of 18 people.
To avoid at all costs reliving the same dramas in this “at risk” period, the communities of the Alpes-Maritimes, accompanied by the State, have been mobilizing for years in different ways to protect the population and the territory as a whole.
New technologies as an aid
On October 15, it will be official.
In the event of an imminent risk to the safety of persons, the FR-ALERT system may be activated by the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture to send an alert to mobile phones through a message to all persons present in the area concerned.
He will then indicate the instructions to follow in the face of this danger.
In addition to bad weather, this system can be used for terrorism alerts or chemical pollution risks.
Other tools have been deployed in the face of risks by the metropolis of Nice.
The community has thus acquired mobile solar cameras to redundant alert devices and portable defibrillators.
The town halls of the 51 municipalities have been equipped with satellite dishes to connect satellite phones and a radio communication system is also being deployed to connect the valleys to the coast in the event of a cellular network failure.
A WhatsApp group dedicated to all "municipal crisis posts" has also been created to "discuss and find out about prevention and sheltering actions in other municipalities as well as the latest information on the weather".
In addition, an Internet bubble device to be deployed in villages after a major crisis,
is “being tested” with an end scheduled for 2023, indicates the metropolis.
To test all the systems in place, the metropolis of Nice has also planned to set up a "large exercise on a metropolitan scale simulating a Mediterranean episode" by mid-October, jointly with the prefecture.
Using technology to anticipate and strengthen preventive actions is also the strategy of the city of Cannes, affected by the floods in 2015. It has equipped itself with a network for monitoring waterways and valleys with the installation of 31 measuring devices to obtain information on water levels and flow speeds.
And since the end of September, the city of festivals has been experimenting for a period of one year with a new "major risk and crisis management platform" designed to accelerate the response of communities in alerting populations.
The device called "Puma-X" brings together all the elements of a crisis PC on one screen, ultra-precise weather forecasts, water level measurements, city cameras, monitoring of campaigns to send prevention messages addressed to the population and thus save precious time.
In Mandelieu-La Napoule, heavily affected in 2015 by the floods, the city provided its municipal police with amphibious and unsinkable emergency vehicles in January 2022 as well as a mobile crisis PC in a heavy truck of 14 tons.
The latter is equipped for submersion and equipped with the latest means of communication.
It can connect to the city's CCTV system and has a drone launch pad for reconnaissance.
Prevention to learn “the culture of risk”
In addition to technological aids to avoid the worst, the department relies on broad public awareness of these dangers.
Since the bad weather in 2015, a Departmental Day of Major Risks has been set up.
Each year, local students take part in this mini-training through workshops to learn about safety, practice good reflexes in the event of imminent danger and thus protect themselves and others.
The fifth edition took place on Monday with nearly 400 children from CM1 and CM2.
These awareness-raising actions are also carried out in retirement homes.
To reach all audiences, the State services launched jointly with the metropolis of Nice, a communication campaign on "good behavior to adopt during episodes of intense rain".
“Risk culture is absolutely essential and we still need to develop it.
There are still too many risky behaviors that we could collectively avoid and thus save lives, ”insisted Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice and president of the community, at a press conference in September.
In order to guard against all risks, the "Cas'alabri" system has also been set up by the Sophia Antipolis Urban Community (Casa), to allow individuals to assess the vulnerability of a property to flooding. and define the measures to be put in place (equipment, works) to reduce it and manage it as well as possible.
The Cannes Pays de Lérins agglomeration community has also been offering this service since 2015 for free diagnoses.
"Renature" to avoid new disasters
Beyond prevention, it was sometimes necessary to "cure", in particular by paying for the consequences of constructions carried out in the 1980s. To avoid new dramatic consequences, some municipalities then bought land to "deconstruct" and "renature".
Last May, it was in the district of the new impasse in Cannes that destruction was undertaken to avoid the risk of flooding and material and human damage.
In the hamlet of La Brague in Biot, housing demolitions were carried out last year with a plan to do the same as that of Pylon and Moulières, leaving only nature.
Higher up in the mountains, it is another hamlet, that of Pra, which is currently in danger, in particular in the face of the risk of floods and landslides, according to the prefecture.
The services then asked the residents to evacuate the premises this summer.
On the Mandelieu-La Napoule side, the municipality bought in 2021, the Minelle orchards, a 14-hectare area which is to accommodate a flood expansion zone.
This space must make it possible "to protect people, property and the environment from climate risk", she explained.
Ultimately, it will be "one of the largest interurban natural parks in Europe".
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