searches suspended in Gard, three lifeless and 4 lacking | EUROtoday

Published on : 10/03/2024 – 10:37Modified : 03/10/2024 – 7:18 p.m.

5 minutes

The sources deployed are immense. Faced with dangerous climate within the South-East of France, greater than 300 firefighters, gendarmes and different rescuers in whole had been mobilized on Sunday March 10 in Gard, with boats, helicopters, drones and canines. Police had been in search of six individuals who had been swept away whereas making an attempt to drive throughout bridges over swollen rivers.

But the search can not proceed at night time, “because given the situation of the waterways, the intervention is extremely dangerous”, the deputy departmental director of the Gard firefighters, Thierry Carret, advised AFP in Dions. . The machine can be “put back in place (Monday) morning and recalibrated according to the drop in watercourses,” he defined.

The three individuals nonetheless needed within the Gard are a father and his two kids, aged 4 and 13, swept away by the waves whereas they had been making an attempt to cross a submersible bridge over the Gardon at round 11:30 p.m. in Dions, a village of 500 residents north of Nîmes.

The 40-year-old mom was saved and hospitalized. The automotive was discovered, empty, downstream from the scene of the tragedy, emblematic of people who occurred throughout this episode linked to the passage of storm Monica.

The three victims already discovered lifeless within the Gard had additionally tried to cross submersible bridges over the swollen rivers, swollen by the downpours which fell on Saturday and throughout the night time, generally value greater than a month of rain in simply 24 hours.

The first lifeless physique was discovered a number of hundred meters from the place a automotive, with two individuals of Belgian nationality, was swept away by the waves on Saturday round 6:45 p.m. in Gagnières, a village within the north of the division. The automobile had taken a bridge when the street had been closed by the municipality and a rustic guard had straight requested the motive force to not enter it.

One of the 2 individuals on board the automobile managed to get out, earlier than being recovered by rescuers after greater than two hours clinging to branches. The two males lived in Gagnières, the prefecture advised AFP.

Emergency name

In Goudargues, 1,100 inhabitants, within the north of Gard close to Ardèche, rescuers discovered two our bodies in a automotive. They had been conducting searches there after an emergency name obtained round 5 a.m. Sunday from two motorists saying they had been in problem.

According to the primary parts of the investigation, cited by the Gard prefecture, the automotive would have been occupied by two ladies, aged 47 and 50, who had been going to Spain.

In the neighboring division of Ardèche, a person has additionally been lacking since Saturday within the village of Saint Martin de Valamas, following dangerous climate, the prefecture stated. According to a gendarmerie supply, it’s the supervisor of a hydroelectric energy station who had gone to test its set up.

“The Nation stands united,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal reacted on

“My thoughts go out to the victims of the bad weather and their families, as well as to the people affected,” President Emmanuel Macron reacted within the night on X (ex-Twitter). Calling for “vigilance and () caution”, he confused that “state services are mobilized to provide assistance and find our missing”.

“There was torrential rain”

Gard and 6 different departments had been positioned on orange alert on Saturday by Météo-France attributable to storm Monica.

The orange degree is the third on a scale of 4 and calls on the general public to be “very vigilant”, attributable to “expected dangerous phenomena”. It is especially really useful to keep away from touring or approaching watercourses.

Despite the repetition of precautionary messages, “we still deplore behavior (…) dangerous, first of all for the people who expose themselves, also dangerous for the people whose duty it is to come to their aid”, stated underlined the Gard prefecture, estimating that such an episode had not occurred within the division for ten years.

“There was torrential rain yesterday, it was impressive, a historic level. I stayed at home because with the water, you must not tempt the devil, it can be dangerous,” he testified to AFP Pascale Fuchs, resident of Dions the place roads are nonetheless closed.

Eight departments are nonetheless on orange flood alert (Ardèche, Bouches-du-Rhône, Charente-Maritime, Gard, Gironde, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Var, Yonne) and may stay so till Monday, Météo-France indicated in its bulletin from 4:00 p.m. Sunday.

With AFP