ANTIBES: Flash flooding around the French Riviera has killed at least 16 people, including some trapped in cars, a campsite and a retirement home, the president said. Torrents of muddy water also inundated buildings, roads and railway tracks, disrupting car and train traffic along the Mediterranean coast.
Helicopters patrolled the area and 27,000 homes were without electricity Sunday after the Brague River overflowed its banks and fierce thunderstorms poured more than 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) of rain on the Cannes region in two hours Saturday night. That is the equivalent of two months of rainfall for the region, local radio France Bleu-Azur reported.
President Francois Hollande said the overall death toll by midday Sunday was 16, with three still missing. Government officials had given conflicting reports about casualty figures earlier in the day.
“It’s not over,” Hollande said, visiting the flood-stricken retirement home in the town of Biot and meeting with emergency workers. He expressed condolences to families of victims and urged residents to remain cautious, especially on the region’s roads, many of which remained impassable Sunday. He promised aid for residents hit by the flooding and lamented serious damage to local stores and other businesses. People were found dead in the towns of Cannes, Biot, Golfe-Juan and Mandelieu-la-Napoule in the southeast, the president’s office said. Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the dead included victims who had been trapped in a parking lot, and others at a campsite and a retirement home. The exact circumstances of the deaths were unclear.
Several trains were stopped because of flooded tracks, and traffic remained stopped along the Mediterranean coast between Nice and Toulon on Sunday morning, according to the SNCF rail authority. Several roads in the region were closed, including those reaching Cannes, which was particularly hard hit. Winds and rain whipped palm trees along the famed Croisette seaside promenade in Cannes in images shown on BFM television. In nearby Antibes, cars were overturned and roads were slick with mud. The flooding also disrupted a French league soccer match in Nice, forcing the stadium to shut down in the middle of play.
