French authorities have issued red flood alerts in three regions, at a time when the country is being greatly affected by the consequences of Storm Nils, with flooding ongoing or predicted in the Garonne, Maine and Loire rivers. Flood waters have inundated homes and isolated villages after the Garonne River burst its banks, with hydrologists warning that rain is falling on soils that have reached record saturation levels.
Météo France reported that red flood alerts would remain in force this Wednesday in Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne and Maine-et-Loire, but the number of regions under orange alert would decrease from 14 to 12.
The Minister of Ecological Transition, Monique Barbut, stated that the A state of emergency, necessary to speed up compensation claims with insurance companies, would be declared as soon as the floods ended. “People who follow climate issues have been warning us for a long time that events like this will become more frequent. In fact, tomorrow has arrived”, said the government official this Tuesday, one day after visiting the Gironde region, speaking to the channel LCI.
Lucie Chadourne-Facon, director of Vigicrues, the French flood monitoring service, explained that the sequence of intense rains was “exceptional” and that the ground is so saturated that just 20 to 30 millimeters of rain can trigger floods. “We are dealing with two parallel phenomena,” he told BFMTV during the weekend. “The fact that it is a widespread phenomenon means that all the small rivers that reacted are flowing into larger rivers and everything spreads. And, at the same time, we are still dealing with rains that reactivate the floods”, he continued.
Vigicrues indicated that “devastating floods” on the Garonne River, downstream of Agen, and which were significant in the Marmande and Gironde regions. Although water levels had slowly decreased following peak rainfall over the weekend, they were rising again in the lower Garonne area. Authorities expect major flooding this Tuesday afternoon on the Maine River, including in the city of Angers, and overnight on the Loire River, in the Ponts-de-Cé region. Water levels are expected to continue to rise throughout the day Wednesday.
The floods in France follow the series of storms that hit Portugal and Spain in recent weeks. Here, 16 people died in Portugal following the passage of depressions Kristin, Leonardo and Marta, which also caused many hundreds of injuries and displacement.
The total or partial destruction of homes, businesses and equipment, the fall of trees and structures, the closure of roads, schools and transport services, and the cut of energy, water and communications, floods and floods were the main material consequences of the storm. The Centro, Lisbon and Vale do Tejo and Alentejo regions were the most affected. The calamity situation that covered the 68 most affected municipalities ended on Sunday.
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