Floods: one person missing and 107 residents evacuated

Sylvain Allemand with AFP // Credit: Patrick Herzog / AFP 10:40 a.m., March 31, 2024

Concern in Haute-Vienne. While traveling this Sunday, in Pointoise in Val-d'Oise, the Minister of the Interior and Overseas announced that a person was missing following the floods. The person in question was canoeing or kayaking on one of the flooded rivers. “Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is a missing person, someone who was canoeing on one of the waterways, there was a nursing home evacuated,” declared Gérald Darmanin.

Searches are still underway to find her. Around a hundred people were evacuated from their homes in Indre-et-Loire due to floods in the Creuse and Vienne, which were however less intense than expected, the prefecture announced on Sunday morning. “There was damage but ultimately there was not the intensity that we feared (Saturday) evening,” declared Patrice Latron, prefect of Indre-et-Loire during a press conference. . In the department, 107 people were evacuated, including 73 residents of a nursing home in the town of Île Bouchard, on the banks of Vienne. The roads are cut in the department, where 200 gendarmes and firefighters are mobilized. “The results of the night were many homes, flooded cellars” but “no victims,” summarized the prefect.

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In Vienne, a department placed on red alert for floods like Indre-et-Loire, the Creuse river reached 6.78 m at Roche-Posay, exceeding the historic flood of 1982. It should rise again at the end of the morning and come close to the 1896 record, a Vigicrues technician explained to AFP on site. Exiting its floodlight for several tens of meters, the river reached the top of the road signs on the roads leading to this town of 1,500 inhabitants, noted an AFP photographer. The water rushed into several houses located on the banks, without reaching the city center, higher up.

"I have lived in La Roche-Posay since the 1960s, I have never seen this. For me it is the flood of the century. The racecourse has already been flooded on the edge but now it has become a lake" , testified Jean-Louis Olivier, president of the racing society, in front of the racecourse completely swallowed up by the river. “I’m afraid there will be a lot of damage,” he added. In this department, 150 firefighters and gendarmes are mobilized and around ten roads have been cut by the rising waters, the prefecture said. The drinking water network was cut in three municipalities in the south of Vienne after the floods the day before, as well as in three municipalities in Indre-et-Loire. Drinking water distributions are organized.

On the Creuse river, “we are beyond the ten-year flood. I do not yet know if we can speak of a hundred-year flood,” declared the prefect of Indre-et-Loire. On the other hand, the forecasts are less alarmist along the Vienne Tourangelle, particularly in Chinon, where the authorities had encouraged residents to leave their homes on Saturday evening. The rise in water levels should not exceed 5 meters, and remain below the 2007 flood, according to Vigicrues.