Floods in Lot-et-Garonne: Agen under water, overwhelmed relief efforts – LaDepeche.fr

Agen has suffered an incredible and dramatic flood this evening. The storm was indeed announced by Météo France. Scheduled from 4 p.m., it was finally at 8 p.m. that the bad weather occurred. Exceptional quantities of water fell on the city from 8 p.m., and this deluge did not stop until around 10 p.m.

For two hours, thousands of liters fell on the city, overflowing the gutters and gutters. On Boulevard de la République, a section reserved for pedestrians, two bubbling streams flowed thickly. Gutters ripped open under the Cornieres were transformed into veritable geysers. We will have seen passers-by wearing plastic bags trying to cross these runoff anyhow …

Residents were confronted with rising waters. Rue Puits-du-Saumon, for example, where in the dark a resident tried with a modest broom to evacuate the water in her entrance. A battle lost in advance …

Faced with this sudden disaster, the city of Agen activated a crisis unit, led among other officials by the chief of staff of the mayor Florent Canu. “I am currently rue des Charretiers,” he explains, “where the situation is difficult. We have about a meter of water. On avenue du Général-de-Gaulle, the firefighters are trying to evacuate the water. with pumps. We also have a serious flooding problem on the rue Ernest-Sarrou, there the level is very important. For the moment there is no need to evacuate the inhabitants, but with the municipal police we let us remain very vigilant. “

The situation is also critical on the boulevard Scaliger, where an inhabitant, plunged in the dark is desperate: “It’s a disaster, the water has streamed on the boulevard, is engulfed in the garden, and I have 15 cm of water on the first floor. My cellar is totally flooded, I think my boiler is lost. I am in the dark, without electricity, and the firefighters do not answer my phone calls. “

We have indeed tried to reach the emergency services to find out about the situation in Lot-et-Garonne, but the teams are totally mobilized by the emergency.

Tomorrow the awakening will be hard, considering the extent of the damage.