Despite the mobilization of 650 rescuers at the height of the Mediterranean episode, two people were still missing this Sunday evening.
The car of a 64-year-old woman living in Le Vigan (Gard) was located in the bed of the Hérault river, but we have no further news while this home care aide was at the wheel at the time of her disappearance .
Those close to a trailer, which has not given any sign of life since Saturday noon, at the height of the flood, are also very worried.
The waters flooded the Gardons and Hérault watersheds, causing a very rapid increase in load, especially in the Borgne valley and that of the Gardon de Saint-Jean, flooding downstream shops and housing in Saint-Jean-du- Gard and Anduze trapped by the rapidity of the flood.
In less than twenty-four hours, the rescuers brought 48 people out of the water, including a dozen by helicopter, and brought to safety 400 people who were able, this Sunday, to reach their homes.
“If we hadn't been there to brace ourselves behind the doors, it was a disaster,” says Pierre Bourgade, the owner of the bar-restaurant Le Panier fleuri, in Saumane (445 mm of rain per square meter) , where the mark of this flood exceeds by 60 cm the water height of the great disaster of September 2002. “It went very quickly.
Afterwards, we saw cars, caravans in the river, the postman's car ended up perched on the public bench.
Not to mention the damage all around, ”adds Joris, deputy mayor of Saumane, in the middle of a cleaning operation.
🛑 New impressive video of a truck being blown away and filmed by a witness on a bridge in #Anduze in the #Gard.
Many flow rates are also visible.
Credits: nenoushaaa for the Weather Journal # weather forecast # flooding #VigilanceRouge pic.twitter.com/cIDNTVDuLe
- the Weather Journal (@JournalMeteo) September 19, 2020
“I managed to get the campers to leave half an hour after the arrival of the blade of water.
Barely an hour later, we had 4 meters and even almost 6 meters at the end of the flood, with 2 meters of water in the toilets.
We have to clear hundreds of cubic meters of tangled trunks and a meter of muddy jams, ”says Cédric Rossel, owner of the Petit Baigneur, camping with his feet in the water of the Gardon at the exit of Saint-Jean-du-Gard .
This deep valley of the Gardon de Saint-Jean offered this Sunday evening a Dantesque landscape, with its tangled tree trunks, its slabs of shale stripped of all vegetation and its bridges as if scalped, stripped of their parapets when they are not destroyed.
Upstream from Saumane, the access road to the islet, a peninsula on the river, has disappeared.
“The house was surrounded by water.
The current was banging against the garage door.
I had to cut a tree in the rain to allow the helicopter to land in the garden and take my wife and me away, ”explains the owner.
At the end of the valley, the main street of Saint-André-de-Valborgne (700 mm of rain) has become a torrent fed by a tributary stream of the Gardon.
“Part of the mountain slipped upstream and the runoff deposited several tens of tons of stones and mud.
It is a budget of more than a million euros to restore everything, ”laments Régis Bourrely, the mayor, while Daniel, a retired trapped by the rising waters, still does not know how he was able to save his car at the height of the flood with water at the doors.
Newsletter - Most of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
Visiting on site this Sunday evening, Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, and Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecology, promised a rapid classification as a natural disaster while the damage observed is described as colossal.
