While Météo France continues to forecast intense rains and that five departments of the South-West have been placed on red alert for floods and rain-floods, the prefectures are taking their precautions. In the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, school transport to schools and colleges in the Aspe and Ossau valleys, and to high schools in Pau, Mauléon and Oloron-Sainte-Marie from these areas, are thus canceled on Monday , announces the prefecture.
This “advises” parents to take their children to school and calls for “limiting” travel “to the strict minimum” in these valleys. The authorities fear the flood of the Gave d’Oloron.
Dozens of firefighters and gendarmes were mobilized “in a preventive manner”, adds the prefecture which counts five interventions related to bad weather in the night from Sunday to Monday. “We must have very particular vigilance in these valleys, because the rain which is stationary, can cause mudslides and torrential rains of the rivers”, warned on France Bleu Béarn the chief of staff of the prefect, Théophile by Lassus.
700 homes without electricity
At 9 am, according to Enedis, 700 customers were deprived of electricity in the department, following the fall on the power lines of trees weakened by the floods.
In Laruns, in the heart of the Ossau valley, where 116 mm of rain fell since the night of Saturday to Sunday, according to Météo France, “the situation is under control”, assured Robert Casadebaig, the mayor of this town of 1,200 inhabitants. The “metal dikes and cofferdams” put in place since the floods of mid-December which had gutted the roadway and flooded houses, “now” prevent “the water from crossing the descending streets”, he added. .
Disturbed traffic in some areas
Train traffic is also suspended between Oloron-Sainte-Marie and Bedous. In the Pyrénées-Orientales, placed on orange vigilance for avalanches, heavy snowfall is disrupting traffic between Andorra and France, indicates France Blue. Large traffic jams thus formed between Hospitalet and Porté-Puymorens when the Porté-Puymorens tunnel was closed on Sunday evening.
A little further on, snowfall also disrupts traffic in the Font-Romeu sector. And access to the town of Mérens-les-Vals and the south is blocked.
“Due to bad weather conditions and the state of the roads”, the traffic on the RN 320 and the RN 22, allowing to reach Andorra, “was prohibited to all vehicles”, indicated Sunday evening in a press release. joint the prefectures of Pyrénées-Orientales and Ariège.
The Ariège firefighters also monitor the level of the main rivers in the department, an overflow of certain rivers being possible, and insisted on precautionary measures: “Do not go to the mountains, do not climb on the roofs, do not approach water courses ”.