Faced with floods, lots of of preventive evacuations in Indre-et-Loire and Vienne | EUROtoday

More than 200 evacuations came about in Indre-et-Loire and Vienne, resulting from heavy river flooding since Saturday in west-central France. Several hundred individuals have been being evacuated on the night of Sunday March 31 in a suburb of Chinon and within the surrounding villages in anticipation of the rising waters of the Vienne.

“Extremely serious alert (…) Leave your home after shutting off the water, gas and electricity,” residents of Chinon (Indre-et-Loire) might learn on their cellphones.

At the identical time, dozens of fireside vehicles have been stationed on the Quai Danton, on the banks of the Vienne en Crue, and on the highway bridge which connects town heart to the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, on the other financial institution, famous a journalist from Agence France-Presse (AFP).

In complete, “750 people would potentially be affected by preventive evacuations linked to rising water levels in the areas of Chinon, Savigny-en-Véron, Beaumont-en-Véron and Saint-Germain-sur-Vienne,” the prefecture introduced. of Indre-et-Loire a little bit earlier in a press launch.

Two emergency lodging facilities, a gymnasium and a leisure heart, “will be armed by civil security associations”, she specified, whereas 150 gendarmes and firefighters are nonetheless particularly engaged on the disaster.

The peaks of the flood might happen on Monday between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., in Chinon, with a predictable top of 5.30 m to five.62 m, more likely to exceed the flood of March 2007 (5.39 m).

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A wished kayaker

Sunday night, at 10 p.m., the Vienne rose to five.24 m, nearly touching the arches of the bridge, carrying a number of tree trunks in its path, famous an AFP journalist.

Until Sunday night, the evacuations had solely involved 154 individuals within the division, together with 73 residents of an Ehpad (lodging institution for dependent aged individuals) within the city of Île Bouchard, on the banks of Vienne.

Indre-et-Loire stays categorised as purple alert for Monday, whereas Vienne was reclassified on Sunday night as orange alert by Météo-France.

In Haute-Vienne, a kayaker was nonetheless wished after an alert given on Saturday round 4 p.m. by a number of witnesses who had seen the person “in difficulty” from the city of Aixe-sur-Vienne, 10 kilometers west of Limoges .

Like the day earlier than, the searches carried out on Sunday “up to the border with Charente” by the gendarmerie, with a helicopter in assist, yielded nothing, the prefecture indicated. They will resume Monday morning, in an space now in decline and with out explicit vigilance.

“The equivalent of two months of rain in two days”

In these three departments, Haute-Vienne, Vienne and Indre-et-Loire, the federal government has launched “the accelerated procedure for recognizing the state of natural disaster”, introduced the Minister of the Interior on Sunday night Gérald Darmanin on X.

“Following the severe bad weather of the last two days, Creuse, Gartempe and Vienne reached exceptional peaks in height linked to a rainfall of 100mm in two days, the equivalent of two months of rain”, specified the prefecture of Vienna in a press launch.

In Nouâtre (Indre-et-Loire), a city of 900 inhabitants, the water rose greater than six meters in 36 hours, exceeding the extent reached on January 8, 1982.

“This morning, we took an inflatable boat and put mom in it to evacuate her,” stated Christine Rabusseau, 64, who got here to spend the evening together with her 87-year-old mom.

Further north, on the Creuse river, the water even rose to 7.34 m in Descartes (Indre-et-Loire), above the flood of March 4, 1923.

“I've never seen that. For me it's the flood of the century”, marvels Jean-Louis Olivier in entrance of the Roche-Posay racecourse (Vienna) utterly swallowed up by the Creuse. “The racecourse has already been flooded at the edge but now it has become a lake,” provides this director of the native horse racing society.

During the evening from Saturday to Sunday, the Creuse reached 6.78 m on this city of 1,500 inhabitants, exceeding the historic flood of 1982.

In Vienne, the place fifty houses have been evacuated, the “new precipitation” forecast by Météo France “will, a priori, have no impact on the decline” that started at noon, the prefecture introduced on the finish afternoon.

In complete all through the Central-West zone, greater than 450 firefighters have been mobilized and round thirty roads have been flooded, in response to a police supply.

The ingesting water community was reduce off in three municipalities within the south of Vienne after the floods the day earlier than. An order limiting using water has additionally been issued for 3 municipalities in Indre-et-Loire.

With AFP