The search to find two missing children continues on Tuesday in Gard, following the violent bad weather of Saturday March 9 and Sunday March 10 which have already caused the death of five people in the south-east of France.
Operations, interrupted during the night, resumed Tuesday around 8 a.m., along the Gardon downstream of Dions, a village of 500 inhabitants north of Nîmes.
As for the firefighters, the system has been simplified: while there were 120 on Monday, there were 50 working on Tuesday, including 25 aquatic rescuers, assisted by “questage” dogs (trained to find people without having to 'reference odor) and three drones, a spokesperson for the Gard firefighters, Lieutenant-Colonel Michel Cherbetian, explained to AFP.
The two wanted children, aged 4 and 13, were swept away on Saturday evening around 11:30 p.m. while they were in their parents' car who attempted to cross a submersible bridge over the Gardon.
Also read: Disappeared in Gard after bad weather: “I just want to find my son and my grandchildren”
The body of the father of the two missing children – who remains to be formally identified – was very likely found on Monday in the Gardon, after their car fell into the flooded river.
The children's mother, aged 40, was rescued before the car was taken away.
At least five dead
This Tuesday, the water level went down again and the Gardon is getting closer to its usual bed at this time of year, which makes it possible to “refine the research” on areas which were still submerged on Monday, explained Michel Cherbetian, according to whom bodies swept away by flooded rivers can be found several dozen kilometers downstream, if ever.
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Depression Monica: three lifeless bodies found in Gard, four people still missing, including two children
The death toll from bad weather in the South-East rose to five deaths with the discovery on Monday of the body of an octogenarian in the Hérault river, near his flooded vehicle, near the town of Pézenas.
The four other victims, all in Gard, were also swept away with their vehicles by the floods.
A man has also been missing since Saturday in the neighboring department of Ardèche, in the village of Saint-Martin-de-Valamas.
According to a gendarmerie source, it was the manager of a micro-hydroelectric power station who left to check its installation.
The south of France is no longer on orange flood alert this Tuesday while Météo France has placed Yonne, Gironde, Charente-Maritime, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Puy-de-Dôme under surveillance.