Toulouse: after the floods, the titanic project of the victims to restore their establishments
After the flood of January 10, 2022, the various restaurants on the island of Ramier and the banks of the Garonne are trying to recover from these violent floods causing the Garonne to rise to 4 meters. Major works and cleaning are currently taking place to allow a reopening as soon as possible.
“We are currently closed for works due to flooding in January, we will meet you in April”. It is with this pre-recorded message that customers of the “Rowing Club” restaurant are greeted when they wish to reserve a table for lunch.
Since January 10, the date on which the Haute-Garonne suffered a downpour causing the flood of the Garonne which climbed up to 4 meters, the victims have been trying to get their heads out of the water. Such a rise in water level which had not been achieved since 2000. 22 years later, the return of mud and water brings back bad memories. In the middle of the morning, this Wednesday, at the end of the dead end leading to the “Rowing Club” and “Nautical Emulation” restaurants, on the island of Ramier, the sounds of mini-shovels resound, replacing those of cutlery. time to prepare the lunch service. At the edge of the banks, still a few heaps of rubbish drained by the Garonne sit enthroned. The soil, which has lost its usual color to give way to a film of yellowish dust, reminds us that almost two months ago the Garonne came out of its bed.
Inside the Rowing club, huge fans spin continuously in an attempt to dissipate the humidity. Gutted walls are visible from the outside, proof of the violence of the rising waters. Just behind, workers are busy repairing the various tennis courts, also devastated by the floods. “We have to remove this thick mud and then redo everything, there is work,” slips one of the workers in charge of this titanic mission. And the construction site promises to be long, all the tennis courts adjoining the restaurants sport a thick muddy coat.
Hope for a quick recovery
And it is also this deadline that the employees of the Jardins de l’Olympe, a restaurant located on the edge of Blagnac in the district of Seven Deniers. On this February morning, the waiters and cooks swapped their outfits to put on gloves and worksite clothes. The brushes loaded with bits of flooring, parquet and other water-soaked materials are loaded and deposited at the bottom of a dumpster. “The water has infiltrated below the floor, we have to undo everything, remove everything and put a new floor,” says Audrey, head of the room in normal times.
For weeks with her colleagues, they have been busy restoring the shine to the restaurant covered in traces of mud. “The exterior, the interior, we have to clean everything, we have lost equipment, food, but we are not letting go,” she summarizes, while keeping the spirit of seeing the restaurant in which she has worked since. an unhook its former glory. Like her other colleagues flooded on the banks of the Garonne, she struggles to give a precise date to the many customers wishing to eat at the Jardins de l’Olympe. “We don’t have a precise reopening date but we think by mid-April,” she replies hopefully to one of them. It now remains to wait for the financial compensation to pay off these weeks of closures. In mid-January, the prefecture of Haute-Garonne declared the recognition of a state of natural disaster for 65 municipalities in the department, including Toulouse. A status to obtain compensation for losses suffered by the flood.
Creation of an emergency fund
The day after the flood, the president of the Haute-Garonne departmental council announced the creation of an emergency fund of one million euros for municipalities to deal with priority material damage: cleaning and renovation of roads councils and public facilities, setting up temporary buildings to meet the needs of public services, etc. During this episode of intense rain, 400 agents from the Departmental Council carried out more than 135 interventions in 109 communes in Haute-Garonne. Two days after this violent rise in water, 58 departmental roads were still closed to traffic for flooding or landslide.
The Haute-Garonne firefighters were also strongly mobilized to deal with this meteorological episode. 155 emergency interventions were thus carried out by the emergency services. As such, Georges Méric interpreted his thanks. “I express my full support for the elected officials and the inhabitants of the affected areas. The Department will be alongside the municipalities to deal with the damage caused by these bad weather,” he concluded.
In about ten days, a vote in session is planned on additional aid to be distributed according to the census carried out on the ground, in order to help the municipalities in carrying out road works and works of art, restoration natural environments, repair of public facilities, and to support the local economy.