In the living room, the television screen remains black. “The telephone line was restored for 15 days. And then, nothing more,” Hervé Cloarec despairs. Since the passage of storm Ciaran, the radio has been the only source of entertainment for the septuagenarian, more isolated than ever in his large house in Pouldergat.
Last November 1, the wind blew at nearly 180 km/h very close to there. “It was a disaster,” rewinds Henri Savina, the mayor. His town was able to count on rural solidarity and the mobilization of farmers, hunters and hikers to reopen the roads. “Enedis also reacted methodically and efficiently,” greets the councilor.
And yet, six months later, he does not lose his temper, denouncing the lack of coordination in the work on the telephone network, synonymous with endless waiting for many of his constituents. As of April 30, around ten of them came forward to the town hall to report the failure of the telephone network.
” I do not believe it anymore “
Ghislaine Déniel and her husband are among those who are impatient. Due to a lack of a 4G network, the farming couple is no longer able to work or be contacted at home. “The line was supposed to be restored on April 16 but no one came. I call Orange every week and I get a different person each time. They tell me now that it will be good for May 31 but I no longer believe it. »
In these conditions, the breeder is forced to leave his home to receive a semblance of a 4G network and follow the prices of cereals and soybeans. “Everyone is exasperated,” says Henri Savina impatiently, testifying to his feeling of helplessness. Regular reminders from the town hall to Orange do not change anything: “The announced work is not being done”.
” We can not do without “
A feeling of abandonment among rural people, while Bretons living in town have long since found the telephone. In these circumstances, the small town tries to improve the daily lives of its telephone castaways as best it can. It opens, on request, its multipurpose room and its third place to allow residents to benefit from an internet connection.
“We are asked to file our income tax return or make a doctor’s appointment online. We can no longer do without it,” underlines Janine Lozachmeur, the social affairs assistant, worried about the most isolated residents of the town.
After six months of waiting and without certainty about the restoration of the lines left on the ground, Ghislaine Déniel is now wondering about Orange's wishes: “We wonder if they are not abandoning the copper network to move forward with fiber “. Two unrelated networks, according to Orange.
Still nearly a hundred projects according to Orange
As the “end of the tunnel” approaches, Damien de Kerhor, regional delegate for Orange, looks back on his management of the crisis.
This Wednesday, May 1, 2024, six months to the day after the passage of storm Ciaran, dozens of Bretons are still waiting for a return to normal. Why do repairs take so long?
No one measures the scale of the cataclysm, of the immense repair project that we have discovered over time. We have never experienced so much damage from a storm. More than 15,000 poles were broken, and we had to restock, pull and install hundreds of miles of cable. We called on a highly qualified workforce, coming from all over France and even abroad, and we had to re-intensify copper production. Our activity has increased four or five times. But here we are reaching the end. There remain between 50 and 100 construction sites across Brittany.
Our networks are not very comparable because theirs are less located on the roadside and less exposed to vegetation: they have suffered less damage. Above all, we had to repair, or rather rebuild, two different networks: fiber and copper. This involved reconnecting dozens and dozens of small wires one by one for each cut… to be multiplied by thousands of places throughout Brittany. Currently, Enedis is still repairing its network: it was simply able to reconnect it before, unlike us.
Would it have been possible to notify your customers of these delays more quickly?
It was very difficult to estimate the duration of the work because we could identify cut points on the network and, once there, find others. Sometimes it was necessary to repair 10, 15, 20 different cuts to connect a single hamlet. We also suffered from around ten other storms, which prevented certain interventions. We know this has been very difficult for people on a daily basis. We tried to support them as best we could.
