The Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture announced on Wednesday evening a tally of three dead and one injured after Tuesday’s storms, 20 October. It is the prefecture’s departmental count. It is not recognition of a natural-disaster state.

TF1, after the firefighters: two women, 86 and 26, were found drowned in a cellar at Lançon-Provence. On Tuesday a 75-year-old man was swept away at Saint-Mitre-les-Remparts; the body was found at Istres. The prefecture counted three dead. franceinfo: Wednesday’s statement did not detail the circumstances of the two deaths at Lançon. The firefighters named them.

Five firefighter columns from Hérault and Haute-Garonne have been mobilised. Civil-security troops are expected on Thursday, 22 October, for pumping. Expected. Not confirmation they have arrived.

Saint-Martin-de-Crau and Arles remain cut off, with power cuts. Enedis is at work; Orange’s network is also disrupted nationally. The prefecture asks that travel be limited to what is essential. Not a national state of emergency.

The prefecture has taken a first step with insurers and has asked that recognition of a natural-disaster state be examined quickly. A request. Not a decree.

Jacques Witkowski, the prefect: the water is rising to unprecedented levels; a thought for those in distress in the west of the department. A quote. Not a sentence.

Source consulted: Intempéries dans les Bouches-du-Rhône : 3 morts, de nouveaux renforts déployés... le point sur la situation — La Provence.

Image: banks of the Étang de Berre at Istres, 24 August 2015, Micka13, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The lake, not the cellar at Lançon.

Sources consulted: Bouches-du-Rhône : trois morts dans les intempéries, selon un nouveau bilan — TF1 Info.