BIOT, France: Volunteers and firefighters began the gruelling task Monday of cleaning up French Riviera towns strewn with mud and debris, as the death toll from floods which tore through the normally glitzy region rose to 19.

Citizens of Britain, Italy and Portugal were among those who died when a torrential weekend downpour trapped people in garages and retirement homes in Mediterranean resort towns beloved by jet-setting tourists.

Water gushed through the streets of Cannes, Nice and Antibes, leaving cars including Porsches and Ferraris scattered about, often upside down and hundreds of meters from where they were parked.

Another person was found dead Monday in the worst-hit town of Mandelieu-la-Napoule, with eight now confirmed killed there after being trapped in garages, a local official said. And in Cannes a body was found in an underground parking lot, leaving one person still missing in the city that hosts the annual film festival, with another missing in nearby Antibes. Mandelieu-la-Napoule mayor Henri Leroy on Sunday described the situation as “apocalyptic.”

Britain’s Foreign Office said a British national had died in the floods, without giving further details, while a local official said an Italian woman and Portuguese man also died. In the town of Biot, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Monte Carlo where three people drowned in a retirement home, hundreds of cleanup workers clad in diving suits and carrying chainsaws removed trees and debris strewn around a river.


As the Mediterranean sunshine returned, volunteers grabbed brooms and mops to help victims of the damage clean out thick layers of mud from their homes and businesses.

“It is everywhere, it smells bad and it seeps into everything. It is making the furniture swell up,” said one local, who did not give her name.