News

Angry flood victims in the south of France look for someone to blame as evacuations continue

By John Lichfield in Saint-Gilles, Gard

05 December 2003

An angry, damp, dishevelled little group had gathered on the edge of town, staring at a car park under three feet of water and a half-submerged street sign reading "piscine" (swimming pool).

"They say the level of the Rhône is going down," said Yves, 44, who was contemplating whether to risk driving his pick-up truck into the flooded riverside town of Saint-Gilles in the Petite Camargue area of southern France. "Of course the river is going down. It is no longer where it is supposed to be. It is here."

He splashed his boots angrily in the water. The little group of stranded residents agreed that someone, or something, must be to blame for the disastrous floods which have struck the south of France for the eighth time in 11 years. The weather? Global warming? The government? The media? The rash of new building in the Rhône valley?

"We have always had autumn floods in the Rhône, but nothing like this," said Denis, a farmer who was trying to get home after moving his white Camargue horses to one of the scarce patches of higher ground. Saint-Gilles had rarely flooded before, but the whole of the lower part of the town was now under water.

However, the catastrophe that had threatened the lower Rhône valley on Tuesday night and Wednesday did not materialise yesterday. Despite the immense volume of water raging down the river after three days of torrential rain further north, the 6,000 miles of dykes protecting the Camargue and Petite Camargue, and other low-lying areas, held firm.

Or rather, they did not quite hold. A series of small breaches opened up overnight in the 200-year-old earthworks separating Saint-Gilles from the Petit Rhône, the smaller of the two branches of the river, south of Arles. The railway embankment that serves as a dyke north of Arles also gave way in three places, flooding the railway station and industrial estates in the northern part of the town.

The twin river towns of Tarascon and Beaucaire, ten miles north, were also reported to be under four feet of water in places. It was impossible to check because all roads leading to Tarascon were flooded to a distance of five kilometres (three miles) from the town and the local telephone network was down.

Jean-Philippe, 45, was trying to drive through yesterday morning to contact his mother. He, like me, was forced to turn back. "We are five kilometres from the river here and yet the water on the roads just a little further down there is nearly up to the top of my tyres. That is not normal. No amount of rain can explain that," he said.

"Just look around. There is concrete everywhere. New buildings everywhere. Green-houses everywhere. It is the same right up the valley to Lyons. The water has nowhere to go except straight into the streams and rivers and all the streams and rivers end up in the Rhône."

Two strokes of luck saved the town of Arles and the Camargue wetlands to the south from disastrous flooding yesterday. The forecast strong southerly winds, which might have pushed the Mediterranean deep into the mouths of the Rhône and dammed the river, turned out to be weaker than expected. The fearsome torrent in the Rhône itself abated just after midnight, after reaching an estimated 13,000 cubic metres a second at the testing station at Beaucaire, a record.

Despite the situation easing, more than 10,000 people were moved from their homes last night. Tens of thousands more in Nîmes and Montpellier were without mains water supplies. Marseilles, and towns and villages further north, were beginning to mop up after torrential rain on Tuesday and Wednesday caused mudslides and floods that killed five people.

French climatologists are divided about how to interpret this week's rainfall. Meteo France says there is no clear trend towards higher autumn and winter rainfall in the south, even though the deluges that fell on Marseilles, Lyons, Saint Etienne and Montpellier brought a month's average rainfall for autumn in 24 hours.

Independent meteorologists disagree. They say that the levels of global warming already predicted for the next few decades will increase winter rainfall in the south of France by 20 per cent by 2050.

Although work is already under way to strengthen flood defences in the lower Rhône, the French media say this week's near-escape should serve as a warning.

The newspaper Libération called yesterday for a vast programme of anti-flood works and tougher zoning rules for new building in the Rhône valley and throughout the Midi.

Despite the undoubted signs of an ebb, the Rhône remained a terrifying, almost surreal sight at Arles yesterday. It roared along like a linear, stormy sea, less than a foot below the top of the stone river defences and six feet above the street level of the town.

Abel Astier, 75, who has lived in Arles for 57 years, said: "The Rhône is usually like me, a grandfather, a friendly presence. I have never seen it like this before, so angry, so threatening."