“Margot, Margot!”, shouts Chahinese, satchel decorated with sequins in hand, in the playground of the Éric-Tabarly elementary school, in Taillan-Médoc. She has just learned that she will be in the same CP class than her best friend, on this Thursday, September 1, back-to-school day for nearly 285,000 students in Gironde. “You know I have a notebook with a picture of my dog on it?”she exclaims. “It’s pink and there’s also a little bird on it.” The girl don’t think at all to the violent episode of hail, which hit the town of Taillan-Médoc on June 20th. “The advantage is that children forget quickly”explains one of the dads. “So I think that’s behind them now.”
Many cars had been partially destroyed by hailstorms, just like several hundred houses, rendered uninhabitable due to damage to the roofs. A trauma for many children. “They attended to everything”explains Angelique. “Seeing water falling from the ceiling, that’s not nothing. Now, as soon as they see a big cloud passing, it’s stress and panic.” The town’s schools were no exception: the Éric-Tabarly elementary school had been partly flooded in the toilets.
Work focused on schools
Many parents of students are among the victims. At Anne and Bastien’s, the roof was holed in many places. “I would have preferred to have a return to school as serene as that of my daughter”, confides the father of the family. “But we are really very happy that our daughters are returning to the school where they were enrolled and planned”, complete the mother.
And it really wasn’t not won in advance. “Two months ago, I would not have put my hand to cut that we would get there. It was really unexpected”admits Agnès Versepuy, the mayor of Taillan-Médoc. “This summer, we made the choice to concentrate all the work on the schools. They finished the roof on Wednesday, it was really less than a…” The only adaptation for this new school year: a class from the Jean-Pometan kindergarten was relocated to another room in the school, to finish the last repairs. The associations of the municipality, they are always housed in prefabs.