The Pyrénées-Atlantiques and the Landes are still on red alert for floods on Friday evening, December 10, awaiting the recession of rivers and torrents, out of their beds since the day before because swollen by abundant rains and the melting of a part of the snowpack in the Pyrenees.
In Bayonne, the Nive river should be “to the highest” shortly after 11 p.m., said at a press point in the early evening the prefect of Pyrénées-Atlantiques Eric Spitz, who has already evacuated about fifty people in the Basque city, and more than a hundred others in the east of the department.
In the Bearn commune of Laruns, where 250 mm of rain fell in the last 36 hours, a slope of the Arrioutort, also nourished by the melting snow, ripped open the roadway and engulfed the houses, before ‘“being diverted with emergency work to another watercourse which was not in flood”, added the prefect.
According to the Pyrenees-Atlantiques firefighters, the emergency services carried out a total of “around twenty” rescues of people stranded in their vehicle after having “forced roads” flooded, but no casualties were to be deplored on Friday.
“We will remain extremely vigilant all night long” assured the prefect, explaining this sudden rise in water levels by the rains “exceptional” and the arrival of a southerly wind which caused the snowpack of the Pyrenees to melt, further swelling the rivers.
Flooded and partially closed partly during the day, the A63 was reopened Friday evening on a single lane in the area, but entry of vehicles is prohibited from the Spanish border to Bayonne.
At 19 ‘o clock, “a hundred customers [sont] without electricity in the Hautes-Pyrénées and Béarn and 300 in the Basque country “, said Enedis.
A wounded in the Landes
Further north, in Peyrehorade in the neighboring Landes, a flood that may exceed the peaks of the floods of 2018 and 2019 is expected “between 5.50 and 5.65m” before the night from Friday to Saturday, according to Vigicrues.
In this town of 3,600 inhabitants and in four neighboring towns, where two gaves from the Pyrenees converge, 400 people are concerned by evacuations, but “Most people”, accustomed to flooding, “preferred to stay protected at home to wait for the recession” in order to “clean the mud before it dries” inside the houses, explained Mayor Didier Sakellarides.
According to the Landes prefecture, which mobilized a few dozen firefighters and gendarmes in the area, only one person was injured Thursday during these bad weather, without specifying the circumstances.
Further east, in the Hautes-Pyrénées, around sixty roads have been cut off, including the RD 920, which leads to the village and ski resort of Cauterets. A major landslide buried the road, the only access to Cauterets, now isolated from the rest of the department, while the winter sports resort was preparing to welcome skiers during the Christmas holidays.