“It’s tough anyway. There could have been victims ”, astonished a fisherman positioned on the Pirmil bridge. The book indeed offers a good view of the consequences of the event that occurred on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, in the Mangin district on the island of Nantes: a piece of the bank, about fifty meters long, detached itself then collapsed in the Loire. The walking path is gutted. Large swathes of earth, stones and even an entire tree have slipped below.
Luckily, no one was hurt. The nearby residence was not damaged either. No local resident had to be evacuated. But a large security perimeter has been established around the area. According to Nantes Métropole, “the first observations show the rupture of two old walls which were used to support the bank”.
While awaiting repair work, in-depth technical investigations are being carried out to assess the consequences and the exact causes of this collapse. A sewage line, which ruptured on Tuesday evening, was closed.
The Loire has been showing a relatively low level for several months.