Shortage of tiles and rental cars, uninhabitable houses, insurance on answering machine… Eight days after the hailstorms that hit the Gironde, many victims still do not see “the light at the end of the tunnel”.
“Difficulty… Great difficulty!” (Alain from Taillan-Médoc)
“The roof needs to be completely redone. We have water damage all over the house. The insurance does not follow. We have no release of funds. We have to take on our overdraft to pay all these charges that do not were not planned at all. _It is a disaster”,_says Gemma, a liberal nurse who lives with her family from the Enclos to Taillan-Médoc.
– Jules Brelaz
“We sleep on the sofa”
A week after the flood, Nadine and her husband still have a mountain of broken tiles in front of their house. “We haven’t stopped, we have our backs in compote. My husband is on the roof. At 72!” Perched 4 meters high, Jean-Pierre lays, one by one, the 600 tiles he went to buy himself “in the depths of the Médoc”.
“We walk on Dafalgan and anti-inflammatories” (Nadine, from Taillan-Médoc)
The shortage of materials affects the neighbors next door whose roof is “completely devastated, as if machine-gunned”. Jean moves the basins according to the rains. “We are waiting for the experts, we are waiting for the roofers, we are waiting for the tiles which do not arrive, because the productions are stopped. The work will be done perhaps in September, or perhaps at Christmas”.
– Jules Brelaz
“The insurers, they are not very generous”
In Taillan-Médoc, all the houses in the Enclos and Fer à Cheval alleys are still covered with tarpaulins. In Laurent’s house, props prevent the roof from collapsing. This father deplores the attitude of the insurance companies. “If we have to find a car, it’s up to us to find it. If we have to relocate, it’s up to us to manage. We find ourselves a little on our own.”
“A caravan would be welcome” (Jean)
Like roofers, bodybuilders are also overwhelmed with requests. “Our cars are completely destroyed”, said Jean, pointing to a completely covered BMW. “Insurance companies can no longer lend us cars supposedly because during the Covid, car rental companies reduced their car fleet”.
Monday, after a meeting with the victims of Taillan-Médoc and Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, the prefect of Gironde, Fabienne Buccio, indicated “to have already signed the transmission of a first sending of 44 municipal requests for recognition of natural disaster for floods and mudslides, the only event that can collect such recognition”. The prefect warns, however, that “this procedure would not provide all the answers expected. It is to their insurance that the victims must turn without delay”.
– Jules Brelaz