It is Anne-Marie and her friend Françoise that we meet first, at the bottom of the HLM, on the banks of the Isle. And what are they doing? They scratch: “Ohlala, I can tell you about it: I got eaten all summer, my legs, my arms, it’s a disaster”assures Anne-Marie. “You can’t see them! They’re worse than before. And they don’t make a sound. They’re tiny, but when they sting, they sting.”
Marylène takes her dog out on the greenway. But never after 3 p.m. It is at this hour that they attack: “We haven’t eaten out all summer”assures the retiree, who lives in Vésone a few hundred meters from the Isle canal: “And the pharmacist doesn’t even have any more cortisone cream, it’s out of stock”. But all neighborhoods are affected. Clos Chassaing, and Saint-Georges in particular, but the town center also begins.
The town hall wrote to the ARS and to the prefect
At the town hall, the health officers are overwhelmed by calls from local residents. One of them says: “They call us exasperated, ‘I’m fed up, I’m getting eaten’, there are even some who tell us, ‘zero phyto, too bad for the environment, we don’t care’! And there even those who want to move”. He moves among people, see if there is a cup filled with water or a badly folded tarp.
But the mosquitoes “adapt to everything” and for the moment, scientists do not have the miracle cure, and zero phyto prohibits green space services from spreading insecticides that are too violent for biodiversity. The town hall wrote to the prefecture and the Regional Health Agency to find a solution. A meeting also took place this week in the town hall, to reflect on a “action plan”.