Firefighters in front of a house gutted by a mudslide during storms, causing the death of a woman, on May 2, 2024 in Courmelles, in Aisne (AFP / FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI)
A fifty-year-old died in a mudslide which also injured her partner in Aisne, after storms in the night from Wednesday to Thursday which caused damage in Burgundy and disruptions to air traffic.
The water arrived suddenly around midnight in a street in Courmelles (Aisne), a town of 1,850 inhabitants near Soissons, residents reported.
“A mudslide engulfed this area of around ten homes and accumulated particularly in one house,” mayor Arnaud Svrcek (without label) told AFP, specifying that “the facade of the house exploded.
“The gentleman managed to escape, with bruises on his head, but the lady was carried away,” he lamented, saying he was “in shock”.
The water rose to more than 1m60 in the concrete block house built at the foot of the hill, noted an AFP photographer. The flow swept away everything in its path, leaving four gaping rooms on the street side and some shattered furniture on the road.
“This morning when I got up early, I discovered lots of things on the road, an armchair in front of my house,” says Jacques Dupont, 75, living opposite the affected house. A neighbor “managed to catch the man” but the woman “left with the torrent”, reports the septuagenarian. “It’s really tragic.”
Many firefighters were deployed and excavators cleared the rubble from the mud-stained street.
According to the prefecture, it is an “intense and very localized precipitation event” which “created a phenomenon of runoff and mudslides”.
Courmelles has been affected several times in recent decades by mudslides, the latest in 2021.
A house gutted by a mudslide during storms, causing the death of a woman, on May 2, 2024 in Courmelles, in Aisne (AFP / FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI)
However, the city had never experienced a phenomenon of such violence, said the mayor, recalling that the soils are currently waterlogged after months of high rainfall.
“With the weather phenomena we encounter, the extraordinary becomes the norm,” he notes.
The department was classified on orange alert for thunderstorms on Wednesday, like around fifteen others, by Météo France.
The storms evacuated on Thursday “in the Channel towards England”, leading to the lifting of the orange vigilance, but nine departments of Hauts-de-France and the Grand-Est remain classified on yellow vigilance for thunderstorms until midnight according to the bulletin at 4:00 p.m.
– As big as walnuts –
In Oise, firefighters counted 215 interventions linked to bad weather, particularly in Creil, Noailles, Lamorlay, many for flooding at home.
The storms of Wednesday evening prevented around forty flights from landing at Paris-Orly and Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, and they had to be diverted in particular to Nantes, Lyon, Brussels and Liège in Belgium, the manager said on Thursday. Parisian airports.
The heavy precipitation caused “infiltration in several terminals” but flights resumed normally Thursday morning, according to ADP.
TER traffic was also disrupted on a few lines in Rhônes-Alpes-Auvergne on Thursday, due to flooding and falling trees, SNCF said.
Traffic was temporarily interrupted Thursday between Vichy and Saint-Germain-des-Fossés, in Allier, and slowdowns are underway in the Rhône west of Lyon.
Violent hailstorms hit the region of Chablis (Yonne), an internationally renowned vineyard, causing “very significant” damage, according to winegrowers.
On Wednesday evening, the area was crossed by two “hail-producing supercells”, according to Météo-France, causing hailstones, sometimes as large as walnuts, to fall in places.
Firefighters intervene in Courmelles, after the death of a woman swept away by a mudslide during storms, on May 2, 2024 in Aisne (AFP / Francois NASCIMBENI)
“The shoots on the vines are still young and therefore fragile,” underlined the vice-president of the Chablis Producers Association, Frédéric Gueguen.
“There won’t be a lot of Chablis this year,” says Arnaud Nahan, co-owner of Domaine du Chardonnay, in Chablis. “The hail chopped everything up,” he told AFP, noting that “in some places, we have 100% losses.”
As the planet warms, the atmosphere contains more water vapor, increasing the risk of heavy precipitation events in certain regions of the world, notably Western Europe.