“Again no anticipation, and big mess”, “An absolute shame!! 3 cm of snow and Île-de-France is paralyzed!!”, “Three snowflakes, a bit of ice and presto!! More than 130 km of traffic jams in the middle of the night and more than fifteen accidents…”, “And prevention, Minister Clément Beaune?” The trial due to lack of anticipation did not take long after the big chaos on the roads of Île-de-France last night and again this morning, caused by heavy snowfall.
From the headquarters of the Île-de-France Roads Directorate (DiRIF), where he went on Tuesday at dawn, Clément Beaune made the rounds of TV and radio morning shows, refuting any fault on the part of the road services. State, instead passing the buck to Météo-France. “The snowy episode was earlier and stronger than what had been anticipated,” defended the Minister Delegate in charge of Transport on BFMTV. Indeed, Météo-France recognized “amounts of snow falling greater than what was expected”. “The forecast models presented (Monday) different scenarios in terms of quantity and location,” the service indicates to Le Figaro. “Throughout the episode, Météo-France was in constant contact with the authorities and road network managers to monitor the evolution of the situation,” he adds.
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“There was a hiccup at the start at Météo-France,” confirms a meteorologist wishing to remain anonymous, calling into question the model on which the public establishment’s forecasts are based, as well as “a problem of reactivity”. “The snow-ice yellow vigilance was activated very late in Île-de-France,” he regrets. Yvelines and Essonne were then placed on orange alert early Tuesday morning, when the snow was already present. But the same meteorologist refuses to undermine Météo-France. “It wasn’t easy to know how much snow was going to be. It’s easy to say things afterwards and always come across the same organization.”
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According to Clément Beaune, once the snow episode started, state services were responsive. “As soon as the snowfall was seen, (…) we activated a crisis unit here and we mobilized at my request all the means of salting and snow removal from the start of the night,” he said. – he indicated in the program “Télématin” on France 2. That is to say 150 agents and 60 machines, which began to operate around 10 p.m., said the minister.
According to the Minister of Transport, it would have been ineffective to start intervening on the roads beforehand. “Salting and snow removal are not done preventively, snow must start to fall on the road so that there can be a capacity for intervention, otherwise it does not work, the means are not available. effective,” he said on BFMTV. “To be more effective, salting must be done as soon as the first snow falls, even if light, in order to loosen the snow film,” corroborates La Chaîne Météo in an article on the subject published in 2021. However, “it would have been necessary to -may have some much more preventive treatments to avoid this situation,” estimated meteorologist Patrick Marlière on BFM Paris.
Former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, for her part, took a dig at highway concessionaires. “The highway companies, with their lucrative concessions, are not even capable of anticipating, sending equipment to clear the snow and put in anti-slip salt? What a lack of respect. In the past, even when up to a meter of snow fell, the roads and highways were cleared by the DDE,” criticized the woman who now officiates in the show “Touche pas à mon poste”. Problem, according to Sanef, which operates the A13 in particular, the motorists’ troubles happened “on the DiRIF network”, and not on its own motorway network.