Flood waters around houses in Saint-Martin-Vesubie, in south-eastern France.
Roquebillière:
Two people died in Italy and eight were missing in France on Saturday after storms, torrential rains and flash floods hit the border area, sweeping away roads and homes, cutting off entire villages and causing landslides, as hundreds of rescuers rushed to find stranded survivors.
Torrential rains of up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) and high winds have crashed into the border area during the latest in a series of heavy storms in recent years.
Storm Alex swept over the west coast of France on Thursday, bringing strong winds and rain across the country before heading into Italy, where northern regions suffered an attack throughout Saturday.
“We are alive”
“I lost everything but we are alive,” said Jennyfer, 29, from Roquebillière in the Alps of southern France.
“There must be one room left in my house,” she said after returning from her evacuation on Friday to monitor the damage caused by the Vesubie.
A volunteer firefighter died in Italy’s Aosta Valley, and a man was killed after his car was washed away in the Sesia River, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) further east.
Italy has reported a large group of people missing after landslides hit the border area near the Col de Tende in France.
But on Saturday evening, spokeswoman for the Italian civil protection agency Mara Anastasi said 21 people were found and evacuated by helicopter, including two Germans and their grandchildren.
An emergency spokesperson in France said around 40 people stranded on the roads by landslides took refuge in a former train station and then were airlifted to safety.
Dozens of firefighters were trying to reach an Italian village by train after the road closed.
In France, the army and hundreds of rescuers have been deployed to search for the missing, including using helicopters to transport aid and evacuate people when possible.
AFP journalists who reached one of the hardest hit areas of the Vesubie Valley saw washed out roads leaving buildings swaying above the voids.
“We have indeed demolished houses”, declared the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes Bernard Gonzalez.
Switzerland has also been hit by record rainfall in some areas and powerful gusts, forcing the closure of roads and mountains.
“Catastrophic”
French Prime Minister Jean Castex, who inspected the damage around the city of Nice by helicopter, said there were eight people officially missing.
But many more could not be contacted, he added.
“I do not hide from you our deep concern about the final outcome of this episode,” he said, adding that the government had launched its emergency plan to deal with natural disasters.
“The situation is catastrophic in some municipalities,” regional lawmaker Eric Ciotti told AFP.
Authorities in the Alpes-Maritimes region were put on alert on Friday and around 12,000 people in three valleys north of Nice were without electricity at the start of Saturday afternoon.
“We are stunned,” said Serge Franco, a resident of Roquebillière, about 50 kilometers north of Nice, as rescue helicopters hovered over our heads.
“We saw the Vesubie (river) burst its banks – everything was washed away, including part of the old iron bridge,” he told AFP.
“My house is habitable but half of my land has been washed away,” said another resident, Guillaume André. Evacuated overnight, he returned to see the devastation after daybreak.
In Roquebillière, flood waters swept away two elderly people with their house.
“The firefighters didn’t have enough rope, and even with our rope, we couldn’t reach the house, so it was too late to join them and the house was suddenly swept away,” the resident told AFP. Patrick Theus.
The head of Italy’s Piedmont region said the storm was the most severe in those regions since a flood killed 70 people in 1994.
The mayor of the city of Ventimiglia, in northern Italy, Gaetano Scullino, for his part declared “that such a disaster has not occurred since 1958”.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
