Floods soaking French towns near the Brittany and Normandy coasts peaked at the weekend but some areas were still under record levels of water and could take days to dry out, officials said on Sunday. A 20-year-old man was missing after a van he was riding in was swept away by floodwaters on Saturday near Lorient, on the Atlantic coast, police said. The driver escaped unharmed.
At the other end of the country, in the French Alps, officials lifted their avalanche alerts but warned skiers to be extra cautious because the snow cover was unstable. Meteorologists blame the unusually mild winter for both the severe flooding in the northwest and the poor snow conditions in the southeast.
Flood waters remained at record levels in Redon, one of the Brittany towns also badly hit only a month ago when rivers overflowed their banks under torrential rains, and schools were ordered not to reopen on Monday after their Christmas recess. At their peak, flood waters were up to five metres above normal river levels in the coastal regions of Brittany worst hit by the latest inundations.
Army trucks splashed through knee-high waters to evacuate residents from neighbourhoods near swollen rivers. "There's not much we can do, it's the fault of the rain," Redon's mayor, Alain Madelin, told LCI television. "We can't build a Great Wall of China around Redon."
