VIDEO – Floods in the Gard: motorists stuck on the A9 “with water up to their shoulders” – LCI

Trapped by bad weather in the Gard. This Tuesday, September 14 afternoon, dozens of motorists found themselves stranded and without an emergency exit on the A9, between Nîmes and Montpellier. Some, in great danger, had to be hoisted.

A truck driver had to escape through the window of his truck. “I was scared, I had to get on the roof of the white van”, he shows in the TF1 report at the top of this article. “I couldn’t open the door and I only saw this way out. I wasn’t going to step into the water, the current would have swept me away. I helped a person get out of their vehicle and then we were mounted on the parapet “, he continues.

Most motorists have also fled their cars through the window. On their way to Spain, a couple found themselves astride the central parapet. “We were hanging on, we were sitting on the parapet and the water was pouring out. We were up to our shoulders.”, testifies the woman. “We saw this torrent coming and we thought it was the end of the world”, adds her husband.

In a few minutes, the runoff turned into a torrent. The water rose in the cars up to the knees of the trapped motorists. “All of a sudden, water started to flood the car. I was really very, very scared because I saw myself locked in the car, not to be able to get out”, explains a woman still in shock.

It all started with the stream that goes under the highway. Usually dry, it quickly inflated until it overwhelmed the A9. “The water came down from the Garrigue, it pushed on the highway and it put everything down”, says a disaster victim.

The storm caused a gas leak a little further on this same highway. Traffic was, in fact, still blocked at the end of the afternoon. There were fourteen kilometers of traffic jams until the arrival of the first tow trucks. Because of the water, the victims could no longer start. A few kilometers from the A9, the railway was also flooded.