During the night from Sunday to Monday, an unprecedented episode of precipitation in Savoie weakened the mountain and caused a new landslide in the Maurienne valley, a few kilometers from the one that took place last August. “This episode, accompanied by the melting of part of the snowpack, is likely to cause a reaction in waterways with mudslides and landslides,” the prefect of Isère said in a press release on Sunday. . 20 minutes takes stock as the rain flood alert has just gone back from orange to yellow in the department this Wednesday evening.
Huge blocks of rock fell a few meters from homes
According to testimonies relayed by TF1, it was a “loud noise” that woke up residents of the hamlet of Sordières, in Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, at 4 a.m., during the night from Sunday to Monday. A few meters from their accommodation, a huge block of rock weighing 100 m3 fell from the mountain.
Faced with the threat of an additional 300 to 400 m3 of rocks falling, the authorities ordered the evacuation of the small village. In total, around twenty people had to leave their homes and were relocated to communal shelters in Beaune and Thyl. They only had a few minutes the following days to collect their belongings.
Wednesday evening, the situation had not evolved and the hamlet was still prohibited from access, indicated to 20 minutes, Pascale Excoffier, technical agent for the town of Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne. According to her, it will remain so “at least until next week, given how dangerous it is”. In the meantime, there is no question of returning to the site. “We are not going to take the risk of getting a stone on our head,” she emphasizes. But I think several more rocks fell given how Monday was! »
Geologists on the ground to analyze the situation
Pascale Excoffier specifies that the town hall brought in “special teams” to secure the premises and assess the risks. Geologists were also on site on Tuesday. According to the first analyzes shared by France Infoit is the amount of precipitation that has fallen in recent weeks which has favored the rockfalls.
Rainwater had seeped into the mountain and frozen, then destabilized the rock when temperatures cooled. According to weather forecasts, the situation should calm down at the end of the week. “The disturbance which gave strong accumulations in the Alps and the Jura on Tuesday and last night is in the process of evacuating towards Italy,” indicates the Météo-France bulletin. Currently, a temporary calm is taking shape, despite stormy showers in Haute-Savoie. The rain-snow limit is decreasing around 1,400/1,500 m, which now limits the hydrological impacts of precipitation to mid-mountain basins. »