Isère Flooding: Storms Cause Chaos and Intense Damage Across the Department

The days go by and look alike for the Isère firefighters. New violent storms required their mobilization this Monday, June 12. The first calls came in around 7 p.m. The most affected sectors were the municipalities around the lake of Paladru, Oyeu, Châbons or Rives at first. In these sectors, accumulations of rain of 40 to 60 mm were recorded, according to estimates by Météo Center Isère.

Many calls to firefighters

Cellars and garages were flooded, roadways submerged. As in Châbons and Val-de-Virieu where many runoffs have been observed, making the road to Virieu impassable where the roadway has been transformed into a muddy water river. Just like on the RD73 and RD17, between Val-de-Virieu, Montagnieu and Chassignieu. But according to the first findings, no significant damage was identified. At 10 p.m., Sdis 38 had already recorded 70 interventions. And the calls kept coming.

Then over the course of the evening, the storms moved towards the Voironnais as well as the Grenoble conurbation and Grésivaudan. In the south of the department, the storms led the firefighters to intervene more than 60 times between 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., mainly for floods that were fortunately not serious.

In Grésivaudan, the floor of the garages of five houses was thus covered with about thirty centimeters of water in a few minutes on the way to Sétérées-du-Dessous in Meylan. Meylan where around fifty boxes were also flooded on the Chemin de la Revirée.

The torrential rains also caused the flooding of nearly 3,000 m2 of premises belonging to the company Tornier, rue Lavoisier in Montbonnot-Saint-Martin and specialized in the manufacture of orthopedic implants. Its activity should not be disturbed for all that.
The false ceiling of a theater collapses in full performance

In addition, around 8:30 p.m., a false ceiling soaked in water partially fell in the theater located on Place de l’Agora in Saint-Ismier where a show was in progress. 300 people were able to evacuate the premises before the arrival of help and no one was injured but a dozen firefighters were mobilized to unclog the rainwater drains from the roof terrace and secure the electricity meter.

The storm also caused a new mudslide which cut off departmental road 30 in the municipality of Plateau-des-Petites-Roches between Saint-Pancrasse and Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet, like on Friday June 2.

SNCF lines Grenoble-Lyon and Grenoble-Saint-André-le-Gaz interrupted until Friday

On the Pays Voironnais side, the bad weather also caused damage. In Rives, a large part of the cemetery and the adjoining car park was indeed flooded, 80 centimeters of water being recorded in places. A mudslide crossed the railway, forcing the SNCF to interrupt train traffic (probably until the end of the week) between Lyon and Grenoble and between Saint-André-le-Gaz and Grenoble. The transport plan for the next few days was being drawn up on Monday evening.

Finally, a mudslide cut off the RD 73C between the municipalities of Beaufort and Thodure.