Flood in Bardonecchia, the Frejus overflows: the first images from the drone

The long-awaited rain after the heat wave has hurt the mountains, in Piedmont as in Valle d'Aosta, yesterday in Veneto. In Bardonecchia, a tourist resort at 1,300 meters above sea level in the Turin area, a 70-year-old man lost his life, swept away by water and mud after the flooding of the Frejus river. Not two years have passed since a landslide terrorized the town, on the night between August 13 and 14, 2023. At 1,500 meters in Cogne, the problem is once again the road connections.

Exactly one year after the flood that made it unreachable for twenty-eight days, three landslides have once again isolated the town at the foot of the Gran Paradiso. Bardonecchia, a small pearl in a side street of the Susa valley, has once again been frightened by its Frejus stream, a rushing torrent that passes right through the town center and that was capable of erasing the local geography with mud for days in 2023. The maximum alert was immediately launched today by the Municipality. "Do not approach the bridges and avoid travel" was the appeal of the mayor, Chiara Rossetti, who ordered "not to leave the house and not to use the car". Flooding has been recorded on the A32 Turin Bardonecchia highway and the exit for the tourist resort has been closed in both directions.

The same goes for the state road near the town, which is full of water. The victim is a 70-year-old man, who some people saw get out of his van and disappear into the water and mud. The firefighters recovered him lifeless. In the town, meanwhile, 150 children on vacation at summer camps have been taken to safety in the sports hall, also available to anyone who needs it, and there is a red zone along the stream with no access. The firefighters are busy clearing the roads of debris and trying to make them safe. In Cogne, the timing is not yet clear, but the situation is very different from a year ago, when the Grand Eyvia stream wiped out large sections of the only road connecting it to the valley floor, leading to the evacuation by helicopter of 1,800 people who were stranded.

Today, however, in a few hours it was possible to grant a transit window on the road, but the definitive reopening date is expected only for Tuesday. And a yellow hydrogeological alert weighs on the next few hours for new possible landslides. The landslides arrived at the same time as the start of a tourist season that started under the best auspices and the hoteliers hope for a quick reopening: thanks to the heat in the cities, there are already an estimated 4 thousand people in the town. On the regional 47 of the Aosta Valley the storm hit around 3, further downstream from the town of Cogne. In an hour, 40 millimeters of rain mixed with hail fell on the ground: stones, mud and plants fell on the road.

The worst consequences were on a 500-meter stretch of roadway, in the municipality of Aymavilles, between Vieyes and the Chevril bridge. Like a year ago, around kilometer 9. No one, like then, was injured. The passengers of a car, which was stuck, were rescued in a joint operation by the Aosta Valley Alpine rescue team and firefighters. The road was closed further down, at the Ozein junction, where tourists in cars, including from abroad, found themselves faced with a barrier. A landslide had fallen only yesterday in Veneto, on Croda Marcora, in the Belluno Dolomites. It had covered the town of San Vito di Cadore, the most important center along the 51 di Alemagna before Cortina d'Ampezzo, with a thick layer of dust, without however causing any damage in the town.