In 2014, four people died after a violent flood of the Bitoulet river. The municipal campsite, where two victims were killed, was partly in a declared zone floodable in 1989.
Le Monde with AFP
Eight years after floods, which had killed four people in this small spa station, two ex-mayors of Lamalou-les-Bains (Hérault) were sentenced, Friday, May 27, to a year in suspended prison for ” Homicides “and” involuntary injuries “by the Béziers Criminal Court.
The two ex-edles, Marcel Roques, 73, centrist mayor from 1983 to March 2014, and his successor Philippe Tailland, also 73, in office at the time of the tragedy, were also definitively prohibited to exercise a job in the public service. They will each have to pay 15,000 euros to all civil parties. 2> a campsite located in a flood zone
During the night of September 17 to 18, 2014, a violent flood of the Bitoulet river, a tributary of the Orb, had caused the death of a couple, as well as a woman and her daughter who stayed in Municipal campsite of this Southern Cévennes spa station, 35 kilometers north of Béziers and 80 kilometers from Montpellier. Eleven other people had been injured. All the victims resided at the campsite.
Installed in 1982, the municipal campsite, which overlooked the river by about three meters, was partly in a floodable zone in 1989, just like a residence and neighboring subdivisions.
The president, Nadège Larochette, explained the condemnation of Marcel Roques for lack of establishment of “a safeguard plan” and not to have “respected the training of the personnel planned by the texts”, and that of Philippe Tailland, for “not having evacuated the campsite”.