Snow: One Dead and 330,000 Homes Without Electricity in the Southeast

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This Friday 15th November 2019, hundreds of thousands of people are deprived of power in the Drôme, Ardèche, Isère and Rhone.

This Friday 15th November 2019, hundreds of thousands of people are deprived of power in the Drôme, Ardèche, Isère and Rhone.

The heavy snow since Thursday deprives 330,000 households of electricity Friday, November 15 in the morning. They are mainly located in the departments of Drôme, Ardèche, Isère and Rhone, announced Enedis.


The snow has wreaked havoc, causing a death in the Isère and blocking even partially rail traffic in Grenoble.


“Very difficult conditions”

“We have 330,000 homes without electricity. There is a lot of snow. The conditions of the night were difficult and it is difficult to say for now the date of recovery, “said Robin Devogelaere, the director of communication of the manager of the electricity distribution network.

“Given the diagnoses that come back in national crisis cell, the technical director mobilized even more reinforcements. We will ‘dispatcher’ all these teams, “assured the leader.

“It’s an exceptional situation because it’s very concentrated in the same area. That’s why we have significant damage to our power lines. There are trees torn off, branches weighed down by the snow that comes to freeze and create short circuits, and the phenomenon of sticky snow that comes to agglomerate on the electric cables, “he added.

Up to 30 cm of snow

Thursday around 11pm, Enedis already counted 200,000 households without electricity in these same departments and announced deploring “difficulties in accessing facilities because of the snow”.

The snowfall reached 15 cm at Lyon Saint-Exupéry aerodrome and Saint-Etienne, and 30 cm in the Vercors massif.


Only the department of Saone-et-Loire was, however, kept Friday morning in orange alert, said Météo France raised the vigilance orange for six other departments of the southeast.

❄️⚠️🚚Alert snow – the ban on the circulation of heavy goods vehicles on the A6 was lifted as of 7:40 am by order of the prefect of Saône-et-Loire in connection with the prefect of the South East zone. The 1100 PLs stored are allowed, under the control of the gendarmes to leave the storage area pic.twitter.com/R7HUA952oE

– Prefect of Saône-et-Loire (@ Prefet71) November 15, 2019

Vigilance wave-submersion has also been lifted in the Var and Alpes-Maritimes.

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