AFTER THE STORM
The Luchon Floods

Our friend and excellent collaborator Paul Reboux is currently in Luchon, where he is spending his vacation. A witness to the disaster caused by the storm and flooding in the beautiful Pyrenean resort, he sends us this curious and moving account of the events.

Luchon, July 22, 1925.
I wake up. What can we hear? It's the nearby torrent, no doubt, the torrent swollen by torrential rains that have lasted for eight days.
And what time is it?
Oh! No electric light.... Groping, I get up. What a strange noise! It's not the torrent. And no electricity! What's happening?
As I move toward the window, hands outstretched, searching for the shutters, the noise increases, a continuous rustling, like water against a ship's hull. I close the shutters. The dawn, a pale day, coming from a sky streaked with galloping clouds, allows me to discern, instead of the street, a torrent.

This rippling, muddy water, carrying planks, roofs still adorned with a few slates, chairs, cattle carcasses, bundles of grass, cupboard panels, this incessant water, running furiously, bristling with earth-colored waves, exudes a cold and sinister smell of a cellar, a smell of death.
In the windows of neighboring houses, a few candles appear. People shout to each other. Two men, bathed like shrimp fishermen, splash about, stumbling because of the submerged sidewalk. The water flows, flows... And it rises! The threshold is already close to being crossed, each basement window forming a waterfall that can be heard pouring into the basement kitchen.
A flickering candle lights the staircase. Someone leans over. A woman in her nightgown.
"What is it?"
"The flood, madam."
"Ah! My God!...
"The dirty dawn is having a hard time breaking. And it's rising."

The ground-floor furniture has to be hauled up to the first floor. There are bumps on the steps, calls, sighs of anguish. A young woman saves what is undoubtedly most precious to her: a scrub mitt, which she clutches to her, panicking.
"Is it still rising?"
"Yes, here!"
"We gather at the threshold, our feet in the muddy water.
"No light. Are we going to be cut off from the rest of the world? Let's think about the supplies. We go downstairs. The water stagnating in the vast basement pool carries floating lemons, planks, a capsized basket, a boxwood salad server... Quick, open the cupboards! Bring up the bacon, the preserves, the wine! Is there any bread left from yesterday? Quick, quick... It's rising! It's the tragically repeated phrase... It's rising, indeed. We're talking. An optimist revolts with his inappropriate good humor. An old lady advises something I don't know, in a voice that makes her shout weak. We ask a local man; he's never seen anything like it. We're in the unknown. And it's rising, rising, this fluid mud. This dirty, stubborn flow, which will shake the foundations of the house, perhaps burst the walls pressed down by its invincible mass!

Little by little, the daylight strengthens. The anxiety eases a little. The risk during the night was horrible. Now, at least, we'll be able to defend ourselves. Indeed. Dams are already being built. Besides, it's not rising anymore...
"Really?"
Ah! What a sigh of relief! Indeed, now it's even going down." A dark color dominates the wall, five or six centimeters higher than the level of the raging river.
We pluck up courage. We go out: the torrent bathes you up to your thighs if you know how to choose your steps. Foresighted people walk around, carrying provisions. Old women, hands against their cheeks, watch. All the memories of great disasters are emerging in their minds. We're beginning to know what happened. Villages have been partially destroyed. A car has been swept away. A naked man has been found, drowned, in a tree; and a twelve-year-old child, dead, floating in the lake that has become the golf course. The electricity plant has been razed. Its workers escaped through the roof in time. No more gas, no more drinking water. Food supplies are being requisitioned. No more telephones, no more roads. The bridges have been washed away. Over there, in the Lys Valley, a father was drowned before his little daughter's eyes. He remained there, pressed against a fence by the force of the water. And the little girl, surrounded by the waters, waits, arms in prayer, to be freed. But they can't reach her. A chalet has been swept into the torrent along with all its inhabitants. A dozen dead? Maybe...

And now, going up its overflowing and ferocious water table, we reach the very bed of the torrent. The natural force of destruction is witnessed there with magnificent horror. A shredded tree half-blocks the current, standing upright on its branches, roots in the air. The water leaps upon it, scourging it with opaque droplets, seeking to twist it, to carry it away, and to overcome it in a duel that never ends. And the disordered waves rise up against the murdered tree, whose corpse causes a mass of furious water to flow out of the overflowing bed.
Now, help is being organized. Firefighters have arrived from Toulouse. There are troops. Makeshift lighting has been provided for this evening. The water emptied from the cellars and ground floors has left a stinking silt. The sun is shining. Tomorrow it will dry the mud spread like an Egyptian flood. The sky will smile. In three days, this tragedy will be nothing more than a memory, a legend amplified by tourists: "I was there. Such and such a thing happened to me..." No matter, I will always remember that impression of an uncertain dawn and a surprising noise; that groping rising; that insipid, muddy, funereal smell; that twilight vision of an unknown river beating against the stair carpet and reaching out with its muddy hands to stealthily swallow us up...

Paul REBOUX