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Rescue efforts stepped up after floods kill two near France-Italy border
Seven bodies found near France-Italy border after 500mm of rain falls in 10 hours
(about 5 hours later)
Operation involving firefighters, helicopters and the army is focused on Roya Valley area
Torrential rains sweep away houses and roads, and 21 people are reported missing
French and Italian rescue services have stepped up search efforts after floods cut off several villages near the two countries’ border, causing widespread damage and killing two people in Italy.
Seven bodies have been found in a region straddling the French-Italian border near Nice after torrential rains swept houses and roads away, officials in both countries said.
Eight people remained unaccounted for on the French side of the border after storms, torrential rain and flash floods battered the area, washing away roads and houses and triggering landslides.
Five of the bodies were discovered on Sunday in northwestern Italy, including four washed up on the shore between the towns of Ventimiglia and Santo Stefano al Mare, near the French frontier. Some of the corpses might have been swept down the coast from France.
Breil-sur-Roya, a French village close to the Italian border, was a scene of devastation with houses buried in mud and overturned cars stuck in the riverbed, Agence France-Presse said.
Two more were found in France, including a shepherd found by an Italian search and rescue team. The other body was found in a vehicle that had been swept away by flash-flooding in the village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie.
Rescue efforts were concentrated on the Roya Valley where about 1,000 firefighters, backed by helicopters and the army, resumed the search for survivors, while giving assistance to people whose homes were destroyed or inaccessible.
It brings to nine the total number of people found dead after fierce rains and howling gales lashed the border area on Friday. French firefighters said another 21 people were missing, eight of them known to be as a direct result of the storm.
Storm Alex barrelled into France’s west coast on Thursday bringing powerful winds and rain before moving into northern Italy.
The bad weather caused millions of euros of damage, with several road bridges swept away in Italy, and streets in some towns littered with debris, mud and overturned cars.
“What we are going through is extraordinary,” the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes region, Bernard Gonzalez, said after as much as 60cm (2ft) of rain fell over 24 hours in the worst-affected areas.
Officials in the Piedmont region reported a record 630mm (24.8 inches) of rain in just 24 hours in Sambughetto, near Switzerland – more than half its annual average rainfall.
France has declared the region a natural disaster zone. Saint-Martin-Vésubie, a French village of 1,400 people north of Nice, was cut off by road. A group of tourists and residents,including a woman who had lost her house, gathered in the village’s local square to be airlifted to safety, an AFPTV journalist said after reaching the site on foot.
In Limone Piemonte, a three-storey house was swept off its foundations and into a river. In the nearby village of Tanaro, floodwaters destroyed the local cemetery, sweeping away dozens of coffins.
The French prime minister, Jean Castex, inspected the damage by helicopter on Saturday and said his government had triggered its emergency plan for natural disasters. He said he feared the number of people missing could rise after dozens of cars, as well as several houses, were swept away.
In France, almost 1,000 firefighters were drafted into the Alpes-Maritimes region to look for the missing and re-establish communications. More than two dozen primary and secondary schools in the area are closed until further notice, local authorities said.
Local authorities gave shelter to about 200 people overnight, while food and thousands of bottles of water were being airlifted into villages cut off by the storms.
Up to 500mm of rain fell in less than 10 hours, a volume not seen since records began, the French prime minister, Jean Castex, said on Saturday.
Gonzalez called on the families of the missing people not to give up hope. “Just because their loved ones haven’t been able to get in touch doesn’t mean that they have been taken by the storm,” he said.
Many landline and some mobile phone services were disrupted, with some villages using satellite phones to communicate with rescue services. Despite forecasts of more rain, rescue efforts were to continue throughout Sunday, Gonzalez said. “The helicopter procession will continue all day long,” he said.
The two people who died on Saturday in Italy were a volunteer firefighter on a rescue operation in the Aosta Valley and a man whose car was washed away in the River Sesia.
The presidents of Italy’s Piedmont and Liguria regions signed a joint letter calling on the government to declare a state of emergency with several villages cut off.
“The situation is very serious. It is like it was in 1994 [when 70 died after the Po and Tarano rivers flooded],” Piedmont’s president, Alberto Cirio, told La Stampa newspaper. “The difference being 630mm of water fell in 24 hours – unprecedented in such a small timeframe since 1954.”
Cirio said Italy was already struggling to cope with the effects of the coronavirus, which has left about 36,000 dead and shattered the economy over the past six months.
“We are already in an extraordinary situation. Because of the pandemic the region will this year receive €200m less in tax receipts. If the state does not intervene [with rescue funding] we shall not recover.”
