On Europe 1, Françoise Vada, nurse at Tende hospital, in the Alpes-Maritimes, tells about her work and that of her colleagues after the passage of storm Alex.

System D was put in place ... and which is continuing, because five days after the bad weather, the electricity has still not returned to his hospital. 

INTERVIEW

On Friday and Saturday, torrential rains fell in the Roya valley and in the south-east of the country, killing at least four people.

Guest of the morning of Europe 1 Wednesday, Françoise Vada, nurse at the hospital of Tende, a small village in the Alpes-Maritimes now cut off from the world, returned to her work and that of her colleagues after the passage of the storm Alex .

“Frankly, it was the apocalypse,” she says.

The D system to cope with the influx of patients

The nurse has been mobilized since Saturday.

"When I arrived at half past six, I saw in the hospital hall that they [his colleagues, editor's note] had put all the patients as they could lie down on mattresses, on pallets, on beds: on everything they could have recovered during the night "

"Saturday, we did not even have the means to call the doctors on duty"

"There were the patients in the hall, the patients who were on the first floor. There were some on the second, there were some on the third: it was an emergency," continues the nurse, also a municipal councilor.

But despite a lack of everything, Françoise Vada noted great solidarity.

"The nurses and orderlies worked the next day. Physically and mentally, it was very, very hard."

Five days after the storm passed, the crisis is still there.

"This Wednesday morning, we don't have electricity yet. We have a little network, but I don't know until when: sometimes he goes away. Yesterday, he left all night long. ", says Françoise Vada.

"We live from hand to mouth. At the hospital on Saturday, we couldn't even afford to call the doctors on duty. If we had a problem, we had to run after them."

"Some say to themselves that we are all going to be evacuated and that this valley is going to die"

"We no longer have a network, no more water, no more electricity, no more trains, no more roads, nothing more" sums up and laments Françoise Vada, while the authorities estimate the duration of the work to be at least two months. to reconnect Tende to the rest of the world.

"Over this period that is starting, we are a little mixed. There are those who have hope and those who no longer have any at all. Some say to themselves that we are all going to be evacuated and that this valley will die. "

"The state must do something, but now!"

While the President of the Republic must go there this Wednesday, the nurse calls for "that the policies get started" and therefore to action by the State.

"The state has to do something, but now, not in a few months!"

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that the Council of Ministers will declare a state of natural disaster in the territories concerned.