At least three people have died in floods caused by torrential rain and storms that battered southern France this week.
The bodies of a couple in their eighties were found in the Riviera resort of Le Lavandou and another person died after being trapped in a car further north in Vidauban.
The couple tried to leave their home but were swept away when floodwater suddenly surged, local officials said.
Le Lavandou’s mayor described the storm as “violent, vicious, incomprehensible”
EMMA FORMEAUX
The other person who died was a passenger in a car that fell into a ditch after being driven on to a flooded country road. “A local official tried to save the two people in the car but only succeeded in rescuing the driver,” said Claude Pianetti, the mayor of Vidauban.
The storms flooded streets, left hundreds of homes without electricity or water and damaged railway lines. At least two trains were forced to interrupt their journeys and some trains between Bordeaux and Toulouse have been cancelled. Hailstones “the size of ping-pong balls” were reported in some areas.
“Roads were torn up [and] bridges broken apart,” said Gil Bernardi, the mayor of Le Lavandou, an hour’s drive west of Saint Tropez. “There’s a lot of shock at the scale of the disaster. It was a really violent, vicious, incomprehensible phenomenon.”
A firefighting vehicle became stuck in the mud in Le Lavandou
CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Hundreds of firefighters, police and volunteers have taken part in rescue operations.
Dante Rinaudo, mayor of the southwestern town of Tonneins, described “avalanches of water” that flooded houses and cellars.
Residents of Lautrec, a small community in the Tarn outside Toulouse, said they had never seen storms of this scale. “Ceilings have collapsed, homes have had to be evacuated and farmers have been badly hit,” said Thierry Bardou, the mayor.
Guillaume Bourgues, a farmer, said: “We got about 130 or 140 millimetres of rain in only half an hour. My crops are all destroyed. I lost everything in just a few minutes.”