This devastating storm tore through France on Sunday, killing dozens of people and destroying property. What are your experiences? What support networks are in place where you are? Were you warned of the likely impact, and what precautions did you take?
Martin Jarvis is a professional web developer with a passion for all things "France" - including his lovely wife Nadine! With a french wife, a house on the border of Brittany and the Pays de la Loire, an aunt in Paris, his wifes family in Bordeaux, and a dear friend on the Cote d'Azur, Martin is well placed to comment on France from the point of view of an Englishman.
Hopefully, this interest in France and his experience as a developer and marketer of websites will help make this site invaluable to francophiles everywhere.
From admin:
Here is a quick digest of how the UK press reported the situation :
From the BBC
From the Guardian
From the Daily Telegraph
Highly sympathetic, and aware – which is not always the case for the British press when dealing with news beyond the UK borders.
From Chris Slade:
‘Xynthia’! It sounds pretty sinister. So much more powerful than ‘Cynthia’. Cynthia would pour you a cup of tea and offer you a cucumber sandwich. Xynthia, on the other, ‘X’ rated hand, would tear your roof off and make sure that plenty of rain damaged your interior before ripping her way across the lawn and reeking havoc on your neighbour too.
But, being involved in property sales across Brittany & Normandy, just two tales have filtered back to us that can be blamed on Xynthia and fortunately no-one suffered anything more than damaged pride. A property in Finistere, which had looked fine in the printed details, had both the prospective buyer and our agent perplexed as they circled the village for the third time. For none of the houses looked quite like the printed photo. It was only a distinctive oak tree in the garden that gave it away. The storm had been the last straw for the fortunately empty house and its thatched roof had dropped down neatly within the walls of the upper floor and been held by the timbers of the first floor leaving the ground floor intact except for being littered with debris that had found its way down from upstairs. In the overall scale of things a minor setback in their finally successful viewing trip. If it illustrates anything it’s that it’s important to maintain your insurance on property even if it’s empty. In fact it’s a legal requirement in France. But, not surprisingly the client didn’t even get out of the car to view this one.
A second client, having become a serial visitor to our website, had finally reacted quickly to a recent price-drop of epic proportions (from 545,000 down to 365,000 Euros) and urgently set up a trip to view. but, on seeing a weather forecast the night before his ferry trip, decided to delay the trip by a few days. Needless to say someone else, already over there, got there first and now has a handsome 17 bedroomed gite complex with summer bookings in place. One man’s good luck story is another’s tale of disaster.
Fortunately we bought a house in Brittany on high ground but also on the side of a sheltered valley (mind you we haven’t been back since Xynthia dropped by)… and, according to our neighbours…our place appears to have escaped any damage!
I’ll let you know for sure when we get back from our next trip.
Actually it begs the question doesn’t it… How many second or holiday home owners have yet to find out what state their French property is actually in?