The record precipitation on Wednesday evening – the equivalent of two months of rain that fell in one evening – caused “great material damage” in the city center of Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne but without causing any casualties. In several streets of the downtown Jasmin district, “everything that was on the ground floor of houses, less than two meters high, is completely devastated”, and in the city, several roads “have collapsed. », Explained the communication services of the town hall.
Thursday morning, the town hall carried out pumping and cleaning operations, and carried out door-to-door operations in the most affected sectors in order to identify other damage. At 10 a.m., no casualties were to be deplored, and all the city schools had reopened as normal, added the same source.
⛈️ Following the rainy episode last night. From 9:30 am, a door to door is organized in the most affected sectors to inform the victims and identify the most critical situations and the CCAS will call all of its file of vulnerable people. pic.twitter.com/yIvaKhD1Lb
– City of Agen (@villeagen) September 9, 2021
According to the emergency services on Thursday morning, the firefighters carried out nearly 300 interventions in the agglomeration of Agen, after receiving hundreds of calls overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.
The restoration of electricity is scheduled at 12:30 pm by ENEDIS. Finally, flatbed trucks will crisscross the streets of the city to ensure the collection of bulky items in the most affected sectors.
– City of Agen (@villeagen) September 9, 2021
The Dordogne also affected
According to the French Storm and Tornado Observatory and its Keraunos online site, “more than 3,000 lightning bolts were detected in the Lot-et-Garonne” Wednesday evening. In the middle of the night in the neighboring Dordogne, the firefighters also reported flooding, falling trees with a hundred rescue interventions and no injuries to deplore.
🟢 9:58 am: traffic #Bordeaux ↔ #Agen was able to resume normally.
As a safety measure, slowdowns still have to be expected as we approach#Agen, causing slight delays. https://t.co/SqCI2Yf2Ic– TER NVELLE-AQUITAINE (@TERNouvelleAQ) September 9, 2021
A little further east, in the Tarn, a few dozen calls were received from firefighters in connection with thunderstorms, for flooding of cellars in particular. In the rest of Occitania, where heavy thunderstorms were expected, no major incident was to be deplored Thursday morning, said the emergency services of each department in the region.
At 10:00 am, Thursday, four departments of Occitanie remained vigilant orange storms or floods (Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Gers and Tarn-et-Garonne), according to Météo-France which predicted a “new intense rain-storm episode” Thursday evening in the south of Toulouse “with sometimes very strong accumulations of precipitation”.