Alain and his wife had so far been enjoying a peaceful retreat in Saint-Martin-Vésubie (Alpes-Maritimes), at the gates of the Mercantour park.
Their house was located in the immediate vicinity of the Boréon, a river which has its source in the lake of the same name and which then flows, at the exit of the village, into the Vésubie.
But late Friday afternoon, under the torrential rains caused by storm Alex, the Boréon turned into a furious and destructive torrent which ended up sweeping and shattering everything.
The vegetation, the roads, the cars, the buildings, the bridges… and the house of Alain, 72 years old.
"We have lost everything," he whispers over the phone from a reception center that the couple joined at the start of the evening.
It is in this house that we have spent most of our life, where our children have grown up.
There shouldn't be much left of it now.
The water destroyed everything and the mud enveloped the ground floor.
I don't think we'll ever go back to live there.
"
Floods in the South-East: spectacular damage and many missing
Thérèse, she did not experience the disaster so closely.
But listening to him, it was almost worse.
This Niçoise has just spent a sleepless night and part of the day consumed by worry, without news of her son living in Breil-sur-Roya, a town bordering Italy located in the Roya valley, where two people trapped in their vehicle were still missing on Saturday afternoon.
“No phone line works, neither the landline nor her cell phone,” she says.
So, with my husband, we took the car to try to go see him.
And we were lucky to be able to go through the Col de Brouis.
"
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Arrived at the entrance of the town this Saturday afternoon, Thérèse was first stopped by a gendarmerie roadblock.
The soldiers asked her to turn back before letting her pass, no doubt moved by the arguments of this mother concerned about the state of health of her son.
While walking in the streets of the village, she is immediately seized by the violence of the spectacle.
“La Roya was a torrent of water and wood.
She cracked a bridge that threatens to collapse and swept away all the cars that were parked in the parking lot.
But the buildings of the old town, already weakened long before this disaster, seem to have held up.
»As for his son, living on the 3rd floor and top floor of a small building, he is doing well and only deplores water infiltration.
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"I should not have taken the road": a survivor of the storm Alex
In this landlocked village almost cut off from the world, the 2,000 inhabitants are still deprived of electricity and running water this Saturday evening.
Soldiers present in the town distributed mineral water bottles.
As for families deprived of a home, they were welcomed at the municipal gymnasium.
