At least 25 people are dead following the unprecedented flash floods that struck the southeast of France this week – and there are fears that more bodies may be discovered in the abandoned campsites along the Mediterranean coast
EVEN WITH THE most evocative pictures and the clearest testimony of witnesses, it can be quite difficult to look at the aftermath of a natural disaster and imagine how it must have been. In Draguignan yesterday it was relatively easy to piece the sequence together. The scores of squashed cars stacked three high in the car park of the supermarket; the collapsed walls; the buggies, bikes and lumps of contorted metal strewn like wreckage on the mud-caked streets: all spoke of the force of the floods as they gushed from the river through this small town on the Côte d’Azur on Tuesday evening. In the low-lying parts of town a thick black-brown line was etched across every building, showing that the muddy water had risen to more than two metres at its height.
Then, as the stories of the dead circulated yesterday morning, there were reminders of how sudden it must have felt. A young mechanic’s assistant saw his car being carried away with the current and decided to follow it. His body was found the next morning. A two-year-old child died as her family tried to flee from their inundated home.
The death toll from the worst floods in the region since 1827 stood at 25 yesterday, but officials said it could rise when the waters subside and rescuers gain access to some of the abandoned campsites along the Mediterranean coast. In Draguignan, the worst-affected town in the Var department, many of the dead were older residents whose bodies were found just outside their homes or cars – presumably caught while trying to find dry land.
Witnesses say the floods seemed to come out of nowhere after a few hours of torrential rain on Tuesday afternoon, giving people no time to make for higher land.
Standing on the balcony of the third-floor apartment where she has lived since the late 1970s, Gisèle Fetys sweeps her arm out over the grotesque panorama below. “This was a lovely garden,” she says, pointing to the expanse of mud down below, a few filthy cars rammed into the trees and the stench of the rubbish growing stronger in the morning sun. Just beyond is the local hospital, where rescue helicopters worked through the night on Tuesday to bring the patients to safety. “It was like a river, it really was. I’ve never seen anything like it. Downstairs everything is destroyed. Everything has gone straight into the bin.”
The apartments on the lowers floors look like empty shells, but the building is abuzz with activity as neighbours rally to help one another. “There’s a lot of solidarity,” says Fetys. “We all know each other a long time, so we’re helping each other out. There’s a 97-year-old man downstairs whose nurse couldn’t come for 24 hours, so we took it on ourselves to care for him.”
The electricity returned on Thursday, but it could be months before the building’s supply of hot water is restored. Yet amid the rubble there are moments of levity. “Tell me,” says a serious middle-aged man with a three-day beard and a filthy T-shirt. He has just explained that he had lost his car and the contents of his cellar. “Were the Irish pleased that Mexico beat France? I was pleased, and I really hope they were.”
Farther down the street Véronique Gonzales is sifting through the small space that housed her cafe and snack bar until Tuesday afternoon. In the dark room – the electricity is still down – she points to the blackened fridges and furniture and gives a helpless shrug. “We’ve all got sore backs and we’re tired, but we’re doing our best,” she says. Her shop was insured, but she has been told her claim could take months to process. “And how am I going to pay my rent or anything else between now and then?”
At a roundabout, soldiers unload bottles of water from two lorries and hand them to residents. Some policemen stand guard outside the local prison – one of the biggest in the region – but their only task is to keep people out. Four inmates escaped in the confusion when the electricity failed and two floors filled with water on Tuesday night. The remaining 1,600 prisoners have been transferred to other facilities.
Storms are unusual in this region in June, and floods are virtually unheard of. In 1959 the collapse of the Malpasset dam on the Reyran River, outside the popular tourist town of Fréjus, caused floods that killed more than 400 people, and the disaster looms large in the local memory. But the extent of this week’s damage was due in part to the fact that these communities never felt especially vulnerable. In the event, said Corinne Orzechowski, the head of the emergency operation, more than 30cm of rain fell on the region in a short time, and the floods took mere hours to sweep all before them.
For some of the campsites around coastal Fréjus the season is over before it had properly begun. Although most of the town’s sites were spared, about 10 of those situated on low ground near the River Argens were badly flooded and now resemble the site of a great cataclysm: mobile homes slammed against trees, cars half submerged, children’s bicycles abandoned in haste.
At 11pm the security guard at Le Colombier, a campsite outside the flood zone, is turning people away because of heavy demand. The site has taken in 70 stranded tourists, and in the booth behind him are piles of donated clothes and shoes, ready for those who need them.
In the site’s restaurant dozens of disconsolate holidaymakers are dining with coupons they’ve been given by the local authorities. Elisabeth Vreeken de Boer and her husband, Paul, retirees from Koog aan de Zaan, in the Netherlands, were in the fourth week of their caravan holiday at the Pont d’Argens campsite, in the hamlet of Saint-Aygulf, when Tuesday’s storm came.
“It’s awful,” Elizabeth says flatly. “On Tuesday evening the wind got very strong and it started to rain. We could see the river rising, but the fire service came and they left shortly afterwards.”
At about 11pm the water seemed to be receding, so Elizabeth and Paul went to sleep. “At 3am we heard a loud horn sounding, and the staff told us we had to leave at once. We took some things, but we thought we’d be back in a few hours. The water was up to our knees at that stage.”
The couple took a lift from their French neighbours and joined a cavalcade of tourists making for the nearest town. When they reached it, “we didn’t know where to go, so we just drove around in circles until we found a policeman and he led us to a sports centre”.
Others are consumed by a sense of helplessness. At one of the dozens of sports halls across the region that have doubled as makeshift refuges for the past few days, Alison Grateau, a young mother of three, struggles to hold back the tears as she describes her ordeal. She and her family belong to a group of travelling traders who cross the country selling their wares at markets, and have been coming to the Côte d’Azur every summer for years.
When the river started to swell in the early hours of Wednesday morning, she and the 62 others in her campsite – including 30 children – were forced to climb on to the roof of a nearby building to avoid being swept away. They waited there until morning, when a helicopter rescued them.
“There’s nothing left – the cars, the caravans, all our personal things,” she explains. “All destroyed. And now I’m out on the street with three children. I’m just waiting to wake up and see that this hasn’t happened.”
Sitting tight Irish holidaymakers in France
The main Irish firms catering for holidays in France have received “very few” cancellations by holidaymakers concerned about the flash flooding in southeastern parts of the country.
Hello France and Keycamp, both based in Cork, and KelAir Campotel, based in Ballinasloe in Co Galway, are the principal Irish holiday firms providing self-catering homes and campsite vacations in France.
Derry Cremen of Hello France says the company has received “very few concerned calls” from holidaymakers who have made arrangements to holiday in France. “Our customers are not too badly affected by the recent flash floods. We don’t provide any accommodation on the Côte d’Azur, which has felt the brunt of the rain and adverse weather conditions.
“We provide accommodation in L’Île Rousse in Biarritz, on the west coast of France, which is very popular with our customers. That area has experienced some torrential rain in recent days but hasn’t been hit as badly as the southeast of the country.
“We have contacted our customers who are presently holidaying in France and offered them the opportunity to move to different accommodation, but the majority don’t want to cause further disruption to their holiday.”
Colette Ford of Keycamp says the company has been in contact with its customers in France and that the majority understand the situation and don’t want to cause further disturbance to their holiday.
“Our customers presently holidaying in France have not been badly affected by flooding,” she says. “We have very few accommodation premises in the southeast of France and none in areas that have been badly affected. The customers we have been in contact with are generally understanding towards the situation and are happy to sit tight and wait for the bad weather to pass.”
A spokesperson for KelAir Campotel says: “Very few of our customers have been affected by the flash flooding in southeastern France. Our operations are mostly located in the west and north of the country.”
Stephen Mangan
