Floods caused by days of non-stop rain in southwest France forced the closing of most of the Catholic sanctuary of Lourdes on Saturday and the evacuation of more than 450 pilgrims, local authorities said.
Buses ferried guests from all the hotels in the lower town to a conference center and a sports complex as officials said the sites visited by millions annually would stay closed for several days.
Two campsites were also evacuated and several roads closed around Lourdes, where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared to peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous in a grotto in 1858, as the river Gave de Pau burst its banks.
Photo: AFP
The water was about 1m deep in front of the grotto and 80cm in the Avenue du Paradis, where most of the hotels for pilgrims are located, after what officials said was the worst flooding in 25 years.
Only the massive basilica, built on higher ground, was still accessible.
“The space in front of the grotto is entirely covered with water, the altar is under water,” the custodian of the sanctuaries, Thierry Castillo, said. “There are torrents of mud.”
Castillo predicted major damage which would be costly to repair. He singled out the hydroelectric plant, which provides power to the sanctuaries, which was badly damaged by floating tree trunks.
The Gave de Pau was 3m above its usual level on Saturday morning and was still rising, as weather forecasters predicted that the rain that has been falling non-stop since Thursday would continue until yesterday.
A heavy downpour was forecast for Saturday evening and night.
“I’ve seen nothing like it in 40 years,” said hotel-owner Pierre Barrere as he watched the pilgrims being evacuated.
Catherine Brun from Grenoble in southeast France was told to leave at 8:30am. She said she had just had time to take her car from the garage before the water suddenly rose.
Rescuers evacuated her mother, who is frail, in a boat some hours later. The two women were taken to another hotel.
At a shelter for the evacuees, Kiki Klint from the Netherlands, who was accompanying a group of Dutch teenagers to the shrine, expressed her disappointment.
“I wanted to show the young people the statue of the Virgin, the processions and they won’t be able to see anything,” she said, adding that it was “terrible to see” the rising water which they had to walk through to get out of the hotel.
Lourdes attracted more than 6 million visitors last year. The Catholic church recognizes 68 miracles linked to it and many disabled or sick people go there to pray for a cure.
The sanctuaries are not expected to reopen before tomorrow or Wednesday.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was