In the Garonne valley, and more particularly in the Moyenne Garonne region, floods are known as Aïgats, meaning ‘waters’. The great Aïgat of Saint Jean took place from 23 to 24 June 1875 and affected the entire valley.
The people of Toulouse were particularly hard hit by the flooding, with 208 people killed, 1,200 houses destroyed and 3 bridges washed away. Elsewhere in the valley, there was widespread damage, both upstream (in the Pyrenees and in the foothills - a village destroyed and 81 people killed in Verdun-sur-Ariège, for example) and downstream from Toulouse (Agen, Marmande, etc.) as far as Bègles in the Gironde department. The event of 1875 had a national impact, and the then President of the Republic, Mac-Mahon, famously exclaimed ‘Que d'eau, que d'eau!’ as he toured the towns and villages of the South-West on 26 June. The Aïgat of June 1875 was a major flood in the history of the Garonne valley, and one of the biggest known. It ranks alongside the events of 1435, 1712, 1770 and 1930. It was the biggest natural disaster to hit the city in two centuries, with 500 deaths and several thousand homes destroyed.
The conference ‘Around the Aïgat of 1875 in South-West France’, organised by the GEODE and LISST laboratories, is intended to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the flood of June 1875, while opening up the debate to other territories and other remarkable events, in order to enrich comparative studies and feedback. The conference will provide an opportunity to take stock of the extensive work that has been carried out in Europe on the geohistory of risk over the last few decades, particularly in terms of the inclusion of historical information in current risk management approaches. The organisers also wish to take a multidisciplinary approach to the issue of major floods, open to both scientists and managers.
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