バルベイ・スルーの湖・トップ18

素晴らしい山の湖、美しい景色の中で

Beautiful lake. Time to relax and enjoy.

The beautiful mirror-like lake, surrounded by beautiful vegetation, is also explained on the information board. The insect-eating sundew is common there.

Nice quiet place to take a break.

Very beautiful spot. The surrounding path is well laid out.

423 people died; the death toll is sometimes given differently, as construction workers on the A8 autoroute, which was under construction at the time, were killed. Furthermore, not all victims have been found, as the tsunami reached the Mediterranean Sea, sweeping some away.

The initial tidal wave was reportedly up to 40 meters high and traveling at speeds of 70 km/h. It first reached the hamlets of Malpasset and Bozon, which were completely destroyed. About 20 minutes after the wall broke, it reached Fréjus, where the wave was still three meters high and buried large parts of the town in mud.

The dam wall collapsed suddenly and completely on the night of December 2, 1959, at 9:13 p.m. The exact time of the collapse could be reconstructed because it is known when the power was cut off by the flood wave. The wall was almost completely eroded by the force of the water. Only a few sections of the wall on the right bank (as seen in the direction of flow) remained standing. Fragments of the wall, some the size of a house, lie scattered over a distance of several hundred meters downstream.