Flood of the Tarn in 1930, a sad event engraved in the collective memory
Last week, our region counted numerous episodes of flooding, some with dramatic results. In the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, among others, many departmental roads flooded, in Verdun-sur-Garonne, in Saint-Aignan… bridges cut. This is not the first time that the water has been talked about for its overflows in this department, here we know the floods. One of them, that caused by the flood of the Tarn in 1930 has remained engraved in the collective memory. This is the theme of our Occitan magazine Living in the Countrypresented by Marius Blénet, and which will be broadcast on Sunday January 23, 2022 on France 3 Occitanie.
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The Tarn-et-Garonne is a land of water, this department straddling Gascony and Languedoc, is fed by the great Garonne river and two large rivers: the Tarn and the Aveyron. All this water is a chance for the country, especially for its agriculture. But with water, with the convergence of these three valleys, sometimes comes flooding. The river is an element of everyday life that surprises when it leaves its usual zone. There have been many floods here, but above all the memory of the 1930 flood, a flood of the Tarn, a disaster for the country, is remembered. The team of Living in the Country went to report in Moissac and Montauban to see that the mark of the 1930 flood is still deep in the collective memory and in the buildings.
The Tarn is a 380 km long river, fed by the Aveyron: “It’s a river that looks like a river: wide, powerful and sometimes dangerous”. Here there have been a lot of floods. The most terrible took place in 1930, it was a tragic and extremely rare event. Classified as five-centennial, which happens every 500 years. A dramatic flood: more than two hundred dead, razed villages, completely destroyed neighborhoods in the cities.
All winter of 1930 it rained, it rained. The earth could no longer drink. And above all that, the snows of the Montagne Noire, the Monts de Lacaune, all that has melted. And above all that, what we call today a Cevennes episode: it rained, it rained for two whole days. And all that mixed together made a major disaster.
Chantal Fraisse, historian in Moissac
FTV – Living in the Country
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In March 1930, the river Tarn drowned towns and villages: Villebrumier, Reyniès, Albefueille-Lagarde, Valence d¹Agen, Montauban. But it is in Moissac, that the drama will be the strongest, with 600 houses collapsed and 120 dead.
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In Moissac, this river which makes the wealth of the city, also destroyed everything on the night of March 3 to 4, 1930.
At midnight the dykes broke in three places and also the railway bridge cracked. And all of this created a very strong wave that hit the foot of the hills and came back to drown the city. The low districts and others, too, are very often built of cob and bricks which are not fired.
Chantal Fraisse, historian in Moissac
FTV – Living in the Country
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Chantal Fraisse explains to us that in Moissac with this big wave of water the foundations dissolved like sugar. More than 90 years later, Moissac retains the marks of the 1930 flood. Streets and buildings remind residents of it every day. Chantal takes us through the city to discover architecture marked by these events, for example, the Hall de Paris, as it is called, a model of the reconstruction of Moissac: “The city of Paris gave money to build this hall.
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Or to the east of Moissac, very close to the Tarn: “a completely demolished district, which is called the city of Morocco in homage to the donations made by the colony”. We discover the architecture of the 1930s, a reconstruction in the art-deco style, simple, geometric shapes, symmetry, large openings.
Going up the river we arrive at Montauban. Here the water rose to more than 11 meters.
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To the water of the Tarn was added that of the Tescou, one of its tributaries, more than 1000 houses fell in the districts of Villebourbon, Sapiac and Gasseras. Here our guide is Emmanuel Isopet, president of the local section of the Institut d’Etudes Occitanes:
Yes indeed, the whole district of Villebourbon, the station, where lived mainly market gardeners was completely covered by the flood of 1930. It is a memory that is still very much alive in the memory of the old Montalbanais.
Emmanuel Isopet
FTV – Living in the Country
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In 1930, in Montauban, the word used to designate a flood was “Aigat”, at that time people spoke Occitan more than French.
To bear witness to these floods in and around Moissac, we also found archives. Yves Belbeze and his sister Inès were children in 1930 and lived in Lizac, a village near Moissac, also flooded. They tell us, in oc, of course:
In our program in addition to Emmanuel Isopet, there will also be, to talk to us about the language, Jean-Claude Fourtanet, a retired teacher.
Also in this Living in the Country it will also be a question of the place of the lenga nostra. In this department straddling Gascony and Languedoc, various dialects coexist. It is a territory where we know very well the evolutions of the langue d’oc: Occitan authors have lived there since the Middle Ages and their troubadours. At present, we will see that from one bank to the other of the Garonne, the linguistic differentiation between Gascon and Languedoc is still present.
And while waiting for your show in Occitan on Sunday, here are a few lines in Occitan on the 1930 floods in the Tarn-et-Garonne, written by Marius Blénet:
The water of 1930: tragedy in the Tarn basin In 1930, an exceptional water killed hundreds of people and knocked down thousands of houses. “L’aigat”, its name is taken to the singular and without complement. Everyone knows what it is. There have been and still will be floods. This dice Tarn, the 2 and 3 of March of 1930, was unique. It is now classified as the five-hundredth anniversary, an event that occurs only once in 500 years. The death toll in the only department of Tarn and Garonne, the worst affected, was 204 dead and thousands homeless. Obviously the water is still present in the collective memory and its physical impact is always seen in the affected cities.
And to learn more about the word flood, and its Occitan declensions, we suggest you also watch an episode of our little series Word of Oc.
Word of oc: Floods – Floods – Floods
In other words, other episodes are available on our blog in the section: ” Word of Oc »
To see this show, it’s Sunday January 23, 2022 at 10:45 a.m. and Wednesday January 26 at 10:00 a.m., on France 3 Occitanie.
France 3 Occitania ► On DTT: channel 3 ► Reception via ADSL from Orange, SFR, Free, Bouygues Télécom, Numéricable and Darty Your installation allows you to receive the 24 regional branches of France 3, simultaneously, as you wish. Here are the channels, which differ depending on your operator: Orange SD 317 and 314 / SFR HD 444 and 447 / Free HD 315 and 318 / Bouygues Télécom Bbox 483 and 486 / Numéricable LaBox 444 and 447 / Darty Box 305 and 310 ► For Reception via satellites: CANALSAT Midi-Pyrenees 366 and 363 / TNT SAT 317 and 314 / FRANCE 323 and 312
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