On a cold October Saturday in 2020, Elisa got a panicked call from her brother in France. He hadn’t heard from their mother in several days.
In the hazy hours of caring for a newborn, Elisa hadn’t known a major storm was pummeling Europe. Abnormally warm air had risen above Greenland, swirling into a cyclone that swept toward the Alps. When Storm Alex finally made landfall, it dropped 19 inches of rain over the course of the next day, the equivalent of six months’ average precipitation. Flash floods began to pour down the mountain sides, the worst deluge since France began keeping records 120 years ago.
All communications to the Vésubie Valley, where their mother lived in southeastern part of the country, were cut off. (To protect her family’s privacy, Elisa asked to be identified only by her first name.)
Elisa tried calling the emergency hotline in nearby Nice, the closest city, but the road to her mother’s village had been destroyed, and hundreds of people were evacuated. In the chaos, no one could tell them if she had managed to get out.
