There are mornings when the mayor’s scarf suddenly feels a little heavier to carry. Karine Accassat, elected representative of Saint-Cirgues-en-Montagne, in the heart of Ardèche, will long be marked by this day of October 17, 2024. In this small town of just over 200 inhabitants, the watercourses overflowed at once, gorged by the torrential rains which fell in the department in a few hours. “Everything happened very quickly: a road was completely torn up, a bridge gave way, a pipe was destroyed, depriving half of the inhabitants of running water… We had to react very quickly,” summarizes the councilor.
Herself a victim of flooding at home, this liberal nurse decided to postpone her own worries: very quickly, she had to manage the closure and evacuation of the community’s college and school, ensure that the students can be picked up by their parents despite the roads being torn out or flooded, thinking about the safety of the most vulnerable or the most isolated, being replaced for their rounds with several patients… “I was thinking of all those who would be deprived of care in emergency cases due to blocked roads, to those on oxygen who were at great risk when the electricity went out… In these cases, you have to keep your cool, and find solutions”, comments the young elected official, in position since 2020.
But while she thought she had resolved the majority of emergencies, more than worrying news was notified to her by the local firefighters at the end of the day: landslides coming from a hill located upstream of the town risked impacting several homes. . “It was the final bouquet: at 7:30 p.m., as night fell, we had to evacuate and ring around fifteen people to ask them to leave their homes,” whispers Karine Accassat. In solidarity, a village hotelier agrees to house his neighbors for the night. “Fortunately we can count on this involvement of the residents and on the presence of the security forces… Now we must prepare for a long reconstruction,” she says, without daring to quantify the cost of the damage.
On the front line of natural disasters affecting their small and medium-sized municipalities, some mayors often have no choice but to rely on themselves to try to protect their citizens and their infrastructure. Often untrained for this type of event, many of them try to juggle the anxiety of their residents, the municipal protection plans to be put in place urgently, and the human lives to be protected. “Everything falls on us at the same time,” says Sébastien Pradier, mayor of the town of Cros-de-Géorand, in the Ardèche Cévennes. In its territory, more than 600 millimeters of rain fell in less than 36 hours, causing streams to overflow and partially flooding several roads. “Suddenly, your phone starts ringing with a resident who is panicking because water is seeping into his home, another alerts you that a road has given way, yet another announces that a path is completely flooded”, explains the mayor, also president of the Association of Rural Mayors of Ardèche. “At the time, you are the only representative of the State, it is your responsibility to avoid a tragedy. What is scary is that you have no control over anything. When you run for office, you don’t ‘I can’t imagine that,’ he says.
“You can only count on yourself”
An observation widely shared by Vincent Bony, mayor of Rive-de-Gier, in the Loire. His town of 15,000 inhabitants has just suffered “the most serious flood” that the elected official has ever experienced, with water levels and flow rates “never before reached” in the territory. The violence of the precipitation shocked the city councilor: while the weather forecast only predicted a maximum of 40 millimeters of rain in 24 hours, the city was flooded by 120 millimeters of water in a few hours. “Dozens of vehicles have been damaged, stores have lost everything, the ground floor of certain homes has been completely flooded, road elements have been torn out, water networks have exploded, half of the books in the media library and all of the games in our game library were damaged,” he lists, disappointed.
Above all, the town came close to the “drama” so feared by elected officials: on October 17, a child who was having fun playing in a pit filled with water was saved in extremis drowning by two municipal officers. “He had not seen that the ventilation grille was gone, which had the effect of a suction siphon… Fortunately these agents had good reflexes,” comments Vincent Bony. At the same time, the elected official mobilized to urgently find a place in a nursing home for a resident “affected by the disease” whose ground floor had been flooded, ensure the delivery of meals from the establishment, evacuate the flood-prone town hall, organize a crisis unit, get news from its most isolated residents and list the urgent needs of the people most affected. “At that point, the authorities have a lot of things to manage. You can only count on yourself, the knowledge you have of your municipality and the colleagues you can mobilize quickly,” he says. .
Once the emergency has passed, everything remains to be done for these elected officials. Less than 24 hours after the flood, Vincent Bony is already helping his traders complete their insurance declarations, and has himself launched a request for recognition of the state of natural disaster so that his citizens are compensated quickly. A call for solidarity has been launched to the surrounding communities to replace the books and games from the media library that disappeared under the water, while the least affected residents are mobilizing to help clean up the city. Karine Accassat, for her part, is counting on the support of the region and the department. “Frankly, I don’t know how we’re going to manage all this damage: with our town’s small budget, we won’t go far,” she worries. Cédric Szabo, president of the Association of Rural Mayors of France, calls on the State to support communities “in the long term”.
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