(Dijon) The snow and ice that fell on part of the country disrupted road and rail traffic in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Lozère on Tuesday, and killed three people in road accidents in the south of France. Burgundy.
Air traffic should also be “severely disrupted” on Wednesday departing from and arriving at the Paris airports of Orly and Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, which invites passengers to postpone if possible their journey.
Early Tuesday morning, three people died in separate accidents in Saône-et-Loire, where roads were made slippery by bad weather, according to the local Traffic Engineering and Management Center (CIGT).
A motorist died after hitting a heavy goods vehicle near Dommartin-lès-Cuiseaux (Saône-et-Loire) on the A39, firefighters said. And two truck drivers died in the frontal collision of their trucks on a departmental road at the exit of Romenay (Saône-et-Loire). “This area was indeed slippery,” the firefighters said.
The department was part of the areas placed by Météo-France on alert, with the Loire, Ain, Savoie, Haute-Savoie and the Rhône on the night of Monday to Tuesday. Tuesday morning, traffic was disrupted in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
“Due to a slippery road phenomenon, and despite the uninterrupted rotation of salting machines since yesterday afternoon” (Monday), traffic was interrupted for several hours on the A7 motorway between Bourg-lès-Valence and Tain-l’Hermitage (Drôme) towards Lyon, according to Vinci Autoroutes. In question, two heavy goods vehicles “in difficulty” which blocked traffic in the Valencia sector. Many traffic jams have been observed on the roads of the Rhône-Alpes region.
In Lozère, the A75 was cut in both directions early in the morning due to two heavy goods vehicle accidents. One of them, overturned on the track on a viaduct west of Mende, was hit by a van around 3:30 a.m. last night. Three injuries were to be deplored.
Traffic gradually resumed at midday in these areas, but with significant slowdowns.
33 departments on alert
In the metropolis of Lyon, all the buses remained at the depot for a good part of the morning to avoid accidents.
The school transport lines were also seriously disrupted despite the “winter maintenance system” put in place by the metropolis which made it possible to salt the roads at night on the main axes. Bus traffic resumed at midday, but it was still disrupted, according to the Transports en Commun Lyonnais (TCL) network.
For the TER, the weather conditions “impacted all the lines in the region (Tuesday) morning” with “many delays and cancellations”, indicated the SNCF which planned “a gradual resumption” of traffic on the majority of the axes to late morning.
In eleven municipalities in the department and Gard, further south, 1,200 homes were without electricity due to heavy snowfall overnight in the Cévennes, we learned from Enedis.
“The Enedis teams are mobilized on the ground to find faults and do everything possible to restore electricity as quickly as possible”, indicates a press release from the public service company. “The restoration of the lines is planned between 3 p.m. and the end of the day,” Enedis told AFP.
Bison Futé called on motorists to be careful, Météo-France having placed 33 departments on orange vigilance for snow and ice, from Tuesday evening at 6 p.m. and all day Wednesday.
On these departments forming a line from Brittany to Alsace via Paris, the risk of slippery phenomena is high with the presence of freezing rain and snow (up to 10 cm expected locally).
Among the areas concerned is Île-de-France: the prefecture of the region has asked all its inhabitants to limit their movements on Wednesday and to favor teleworking.
As a precaution, the RN 118, major axis of access to the capital from the south, is closed to traffic from 10 p.m. Tuesday.