The thunderstorms overnight from Thursday to Friday caused very serious damage to crops, businesses and homes in the Lectoure area and around Fleurance.
Between 9 p.m. and midnight, during the night of Thursday to Friday, a thunderstorm devastated cultures, businesses, houses, and roads around Lectoure. The phenomenon formed east of Auch, swelling as it went up towards Lomagne. And in its wake, impressive offal of water: in one hour 80 mm of water fell at Fleurance, and around Lectoure, 90 to 120 mm, and up to 160 mm on a neighboring farm. The course of the Gers jumped 2 m in almost an hour. The RN21 had to be closed. The water did not do significant damage to Fleurance. On the other hand, in Lectoure, the rain poured down the slopes, sweeping away the cropland, the trees, swelling the streams, taking ice jams everywhere. At the entrance of the city, the industrial area is heavily affected. A stream, which everyone had forgotten, dumped tons of mud on businesses. “All the vehicles are dead, sorry Julien Sourbes, a specialist in cut stone. The offices are unusable, the machines too … We have 58 employees who cannot work.” The Fleurons de Lomagne, right next door, has 5,000 m2 of premises. And 5 cm of mud everywhere. “It’s the cat … The firefighters will end up here, seen the surface, explains the director, Cécile Liot. We had the Covid, and now that … Can’t wait for 2020 to end!” It was one of the households cut off from the electricity network. “It was terrifying to see … Terrifying.” Further on the hills, the farmers suffered too.
Hail also rushed on a real corridor between Puycasquier and Lectoure. At the Arton estate “between 30% and 80% of the harvest is lost, says Fabrice Sarramon, the operations manager. The branches are swollen, the leaves are chopped. Everything will depend on the weather for the next few days.” Nearby, it is the melon producers of Lectoure who have seen their fields widen with ravines, pass through a mill, under hailstones as big as quail eggs. “I have a hectare, it was under the cloud, and everything is chopped up, explains a producer. That’s how it is! Now we have to see if the plant is recovering: the melon is perennial. But it’s a big blow. The melon is a significant source of income. We’ll see at the end of the season … “
At the bottom of Lectoure, two pensioners push the mud and the water. Here, the road and the nearby stream merge into an indistinct mass. The wheels spin. Only firefighters’ vehicles pass. “I’ve never seen that, says Jacques. Never.” Robert, who lives there, saw “a real torrent that passed under the windows, last night!” His house is part of the fifty homes hit. But the damage is only material. “It’s worse for others,” notes Robert, a philosopher. “We will have to think about what to do to avoid such facts, insists the mayor, Gérard Duclos. We are wrong. We must replant hedges, crops that retain water. Plow according to the contour lines. We have to give the means to do it. And create small reservoirs. ” No one was injured or relocated, as the prefect notes, on the field visit with the president of the departmental council and the mayor, and the director of the SDIS. Fifty firefighters carried out almost 60 interventions, an effort welcomed by Philippe Martin. All day long, firefighters – unanimously praised for their action by individuals and professionals alike – cleaned up cut roads, houses and professional premises before the arrival of a second thunderstorm in the evening of Friday. 500 firefighters were mobilized to watch during this new alert, orange this time.
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