At the institutional level: the General Council has requested the state of natural disaster and, already, a 2.5 million euros emergency plan vote will be submitted to the permanent commission on November 18 to support the municipalities and set up emergency social aid for families.
Following the bad weather that hit the department this weekend, President Eric Ciotti communicated the solidarity actions established to assist the affected municipalities, residents, and businesses and added a few comments:
“I wanted us to take stock together the day after the weekend we endured, with quite exceptional phenomena that caused significant damage in several municipalities of our department, and that we could draw the consequences of these events in terms of measures to be taken for restoration.
The time has come for mobilization to repair the damage, to help individuals return to a normal daily life, for the municipalities to restore their facilities, and for businesses to resume their activities.
Three lessons can be learned:
- Continuing to improve alert, prevention, and anticipation systems;
- Continuing, at damaged sites, risk prevention actions against flooding with 65 million euros of work identified within the PAPI 2 framework;
- Remain vigilant about building in risk areas.
This crisis has shown that anticipation was needed. It can be noted that despite its violence, this episode did not result in any casualties or injuries.”
Technical notes:
The flow rate of watercourses is trending downward (1,300 m³/s recorded for the Var instead of 100 m³/s under normal conditions), and we were far from the millennium floods considered for the development of action and flood risk prevention plans.
Forty trucks of riprap came to reinforce the dike at Puget-Théniers, where in 1994 the Blaquerie district was completely flooded. Many road accesses are, for some, already back in service, and others will be by the end of the day.
A landslide is to be noted in Sainte-Agnès, leading to the closure of the RD 22. Among the departmental colleges, only Romée de Villeneuve college in Villeneuve-Loubet was closed to ensure the safety of people.
The effectiveness of the rescue means and the prevention and anticipation systems, as well as the reinforcement work carried out within the PAPI 1 and 2 frameworks, notably for the Var and Siagne valleys, have worked.
The General Council financially supported 30% of the work carried out by the Siagne communes syndicate.
The Flood Risk Prevention Program developed for the Var valley (26 million euros) is two-thirds complete (CADAM dike, reinforcement of thresholds 7 and 9, Broc water plan dike, and dike between 8th and 13th Street).
This work has proven its usefulness in an undeniable way.
