At around 5 am on Thursday, November 2, Prefect of Finistère Alain Espinasse decided to ban "all traffic on the entire departmental road network (local, communal, departmental and national roads)," a ban which "will be lifted progressively." This was a first, in an area accustomed to the onslaught of storms. The damage caused by Storm Ciaran, and its winds which reached 170 km/h along much of the coast – a peak at 207 km/h was even recorded at the Pointe du Raz – and 140 km/h inland, resulted in a large number of trees falling onto the roads, due in part to soaked soils from Storm Céline on October 28 and 29. It became impossible to drive last night without having to slalom between the countless fallen branches, and various obstacles, dustbins, signs or barriers, etc. Another major hazard on Thursday morning was the electrical and telephone wires littering the roadway.
This dramatic material toll was thankfully inversely proportional to the human toll, which has so far been very limited, with just one person injured when his car hit a tree, and a volunteer fireman very slightly injured in a road accident. "At this stage, the human toll is good. Let's not lose this gain by letting people go out on the roads and use a very congested network. What's more, we need to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles," explained Espinasse.
In the departmental operations center (COD), set up by the prefect at 5 pm on Wednesday in the prefecture building in Quimper, more than 20 people monitored the progress of Storm Ciaran throughout the night. Météo France had placed Finistère under the maximum level of red alert for "violent winds" from midnight, and orange for "rain and flooding" until noon on Thursday.
Every two hours since the beginning of the evening on Wednesday, a situation update was organized, enabling the heads of the gendarmerie, the national police, the fire department of the departmental fire and rescue service, the maritime prefecture, the departmental roads department, civil protection and prefectural services to cross-reference their information. By the last update at 6 am on Thursday, there had been 2,698 calls to the fire department, with 429 interventions, 333 calls to 17 (gendarmerie and police), with some 60 patrols underway at that time.
From late Wednesday afternoon onwards, patrols were stepped up to inform the public. In Treffiagat, a seaside commune with a population of 2,400, the gendarmes had to make several passes to ensure that the residents of Rue de la Mer had all left their homes. As the dune cordon had been damaged by the winds of Storm Céline the previous weekend, there was a real risk of flooding, according to the town hall, which issued an evacuation order. To the dismay of some residents, who were unhappy to have to leave.
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