FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy pledged an aid package of €3 million yesterday to help victims of the violent storms that struck France at the weekend, as the death toll rose to 51 and several others remained missing.
Declaring it a “national catastrophe”, Mr Sarkozy also ordered an inquiry to establish how sea levees broke as the storms battered western coastal regions.
“We have to find out how families in France in the 21st century can be surprised in their sleep and drowned in their own houses,” he said at a meeting with local authorities in the western city of La Rochelle.
“We have to shed light as urgently as possible on this unacceptable and incomprehensible drama.”
The president also visited the coastal town of L’Aiguillon- sur-Mer, the hardest-hit area of the country, where 25 bodies were recovered after a dike collapsed, causing sudden overnight flooding that trapped many victims in their beds.
The death toll in France rose to 51 and there were still eight people missing yesterday after the deadliest storm to have battered the country since 1999. At least four people died in Germany as the storms moved northeast, while three died in Spain, one in Portugal and one in Belgium.
More than 9,000 French firefighters and emergency workers backed by helicopters were deployed yesterday to try to reach stranded residents, mostly in the Vendée and Charente regions of western France.
By classifying the storm, named Xynthia, as a natural disaster, the French government cleared the way for victims to claim compensation and make insurance flooding claims.
In addition to the €3 million promised by Mr Sarkozy, the government has also said it will seek EU aid for the region.
The president said he wanted to avoid drawing hasty conclusions, but amid recriminations over building rules and the safety of sea levees, he added that it was essential to draw lessons from the disaster.
“It shouldn’t stop us analysing the levees, their solidity, their adaptability to current conditions, and there is urban planning as well. You can’t just build anywhere,” he said.
Heavy rain combined with strong gusts of wind and high tides destroyed several Atlantic coastal sea walls along the western regions of Vendée and Charente Maritime over Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Many people woke to find their homes flooded and several people told of how they had to swim to safety as water poured in through the windows of their houses.
Victims driven out of their flooded homes were put up in temporary shelters and numerous injured were flown to nearby hospitals. Some 172,000 households were still without electricity as of yesterday afternoon, according to power supplier EDF.
Initial reports suggested the damage was caused by an unusual combination of extremely high winds of more than 160km/h, strong tides and an atmospheric depression which exacerbated the sudden rise in water levels.
French interior minister Brice Hortefeux said the storm was particularly deadly because it hit at night. “It’s obvious that if this had happened during the day, the death toll would not have been disastrous, because people were taken by surprise during their sleep,” Mr Hortefeux said on France Info radio.