Most
seriously, several houses were inundated with water
and, arguable even worse, mud. Perhaps saddest was
one house where an important birthday had been
celebrated over the weekend only to finish up on
Monday evening with the river flowing through their
house. And don't happenings of this sort seem much
worse in the dark?
In the next 24 hours another 35mm of rain fell,
but, fortunately, without further flooding. We were
very lucky with the only casualty being our garden
shed
The
problems were serious enough for the local
newspaper, Le Montagne, to come down the following
day and devote a whole page to the plight of
Grandrif.
With considerable effort and resourcefulness
householders have sorted out the worst of their
problems, although a week later there are still
carpets and the like hung out to
dry.
There is still plenty of evidence of the results of the flooding. The most serious is damage to the road from Grandrif to Le Mont. The dotted line marks the original road edge. There is about 1,8m of road remaining.
The lane up to Bethel
is similarly destroyed and there are several other
places where the road has been undercut by land
slips.
Another example is the river as it flows into the
lake below our hydro-electric power station. The
little green structure was a footbridge. As trees
and debris flooded down it was transformed into a
dam. The river had to find an alternative route.
Now the sad little bridge is marooned in the midst
of the debris of rocks and soils washed down on the
flood.
Although
there was another flood in 2004, this was more
serious. Is this a result of climate change and can
we expect this to happen regularly now
?