It is a landscape that makes you dream but it can be very dangerous. In five months, the cliffs of Etretat have been the scene of two fatal accidents. As summer approaches, on the Côte d’Albâtre, the authorities are launching a call for caution for hikers.
“Sometimes it’s people who want to take pictures, people who go off the path, who approach the edgedescribes Commander Julien Hure, deputy head of the western group of Sdis76. Even the locals are sometimes surprised, the cliff recedes with erosion, we end up with paths that are closer to the void. It’s not the absence of a fence that means the absence of danger.”
– Manon Lombart-Brunel
“We must adapt the paths”
“There is sometimes less than a meter between the barbed wire and the precipice, notes for his part François Aubin, mayor of Saint-Jouin-Bruneval, next to Etretat. To avoid new accidents, he now calls on all elected officials to communicate more about the risks. For him, not everything should rest on the shoulders of hikers. “I can hear that there are reckless people but at the same time, let’s create the security conditions so that we live normally and that we can all walk around. We must adapt the paths, authorized in some places, not in others. It is up to local authorities and elected officials to ensure that all these pathways are improved.”
In particular, he asks pull back the barbed wire on the ends of paths threatened by erosion.