In images, in picturesAlmost a year ago, the storm Alex ravaged the Nice hinterland, killing 10 people and missing 8. The Roya valley, in the Mercantour, still bears the scars of the disaster. The images of the photographers Thérèse Verrat and Vincent Toussaint recount this landscape marked by disaster.
On Friday October 2, 2020, the photographer couple Thérèse Verrat, 36, and Vincent Toussaint, 33, are in Paris, celebrating the arrival of a newborn baby in the family. Thérèse’s brother, a firefighter on the Côte d’Azur, is not part of the party. He is in Saorge, in the hinterland of Nice – where the storm Alex started in the middle of the afternoon -, to evacuate houses caught in the flood.
As the evening progressed, the tone of the SMS became more and more alarming. In Paris, we do not understand the extent of what is happening. On Saturday the 3rd, in the early hours of the morning, the storm has calmed down. But in the valleys of Tinée, Vésubie and Roya, in the Alpes-Maritimes, houses were destroyed, roads smashed, bridges gutted. We look for neighbors, we count the inhabitants: the number of missing continues to climb.
The day before, however, some judged the bans and the school closings “Excessive” in front of a sky certainly gray, but not very threatening. In a few hours, sometimes the equivalent of more than three months of rain fell. More than 500 liters per square meter.
In a few hours, the rivers grew to more than 8 meters in height. The Vésubie and the Roya have turned into immense torrents of mud which tore everything in their path. The streets and gardens are now covered with debris carried by the waves. Since the last identification of a body off Narbonne (Aude), in January 2021, the death toll has been ten dead and eight missing.
A very sentimental place
Upon awakening, Thérèse Verrat and Vincent Toussaint discover this gutted valley in the newspapers. For this couple, it is a very sentimental place. Thérèse was born in Nice. As a child, she spent all her weekends and her holidays in the Roya valley, with her family. When she met Vincent, in 2014, she introduced him to this place ” magical “.
She particularly likes the Vallée des Merveilles, in the Mercantour, where peasants and shepherds engraved stylized cattle, tools and figures with flint tip five thousand years ago. They pace it with their backpack. This is where they begin to photograph the landscapes, first each on their own. “It was the beginning of our photographic exchanges “, says Thérèse Verrat. Since then, these exchanges have turned into a work in pairs.
After the storm, the photographers let a month pass. They prefer to wait until the cameras are on. Above all, they need to prepare for the tear of seeing these places they love so disfigured, bruised, isolated. The Vésubie valley was quickly restored to its feet than that of Roya.
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