France’s prime minister said on Friday that firefighters and other rescuers have been involved in about 2,300 operations, some of them lifesaving, in what appears to be the biggest flooding for 40 years in central France.
Michel Barnier visited French authorities’ crisis centre in Paris and said there had not been such violent rain in many people’s memory.
More than 1,000 people were evacuated. Most of them were able to go back home on Friday.
Mr Barnier also praised an alert system, used for the first time, that sent text messages urging people in the concerned areas to delay or cancel their planned trips and stay in a safe place.
French weather agency Meteo France said as much as 700mm (27.5 inches) of rain fell in 48 hours in some local areas in the regions of Ardeche and Lozere.
National railway operator SNCF halted regional trains between the cities of Lyon and Saint-Etienne on Thursday saying the tracks were impassable. Local train services will remain disrupted for several days, it said.
A main highway between the two cities also was inundated and remained closed on Friday.
Meteo France lifted its red alert for bad weather on Friday morning but still warned of potential heavy rain and floods in southwestern France.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here