Flooded rivers, flooded streets, damaged houses: Pas-de-Calais in France tried to assess the extent of the damage on Friday after a night of torrential rain followed an already devastating rise in water on Tuesday.
“We’ve been like this for a week and I can’t take it anymore,” said Corentin Thelier, 27, a resident of Hesdigneul-lès-Boulogne, a town also hit by flooding on November 2 as Storm Ciaran passed through .
The department has been on alert since Thursday by Météo-France, both for floods and for rain and floods, an episode that was only expected to subside at the end of Friday afternoon.
Seine-Maritime and Somme, two departments severely affected by bad weather locally overnight, as well as the north, are on orange alert.
“There will be calm after 4 p.m.,” the northern defense and security zone prefecture said on Friday morning.
Nineteen residents of a small retirement home in Nielles-lès-Bléquin had to be evacuated as a precaution, the prefecture said. An operation also took place on a farm in Montreuil on Friday morning in which around a hundred cattle were saved.
AFP
The death toll since Monday remains at three with minor injuries.
According to Météo-France, rainfall amounts throughout the episode are close to the usual amount over a month.
According to the prefecture, “expected rain accumulations at the peak of the episode” between 4 p.m. Thursday and 4 p.m. Friday are “of the order of 30 to 50 mm in Pas-de-Calais” and “70 to 80 mm.” the “West of the Somme”.
“Issue”
The lull expected at the end of the day “should last throughout the weekend”, but there are already “some concerns” about a new episode of rain at the beginning of next week, said Minister for Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu on “FranceInfo”.
No fewer than 130 municipalities, according to the prefecture, have been affected in recent days by floods in the department, already affected by Storm Ciaran, followed by the record floods of the Liane, the Aa and the Canche on Tuesday.
According to a report from Vigicrues on Friday, the level of the Liana is “much lower” than that observed “at the beginning of the week”, but overflows “are still possible”.
Conversely, the Canche is at risk of “equaling or even exceeding the flooding seen at the beginning of the week” and the Aa is at risk of “general and damaging flooding”.
Two large pumps with a capacity of 5,400 m3 per hour are in use and a third must be deployed quickly to limit the damage, the prefecture said.
“Stay vigilant for your loved ones and for yourself,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Thursday evening on X to the residents of Pas-de-Calais and to “compatriots who are undergoing the test of bad weather.”
The Red Cross has opened twelve accommodation centers, the largest of which is in Saint-Étienne-au-Mont, where 300 houses were damaged overnight from Monday to Tuesday.
Tired
A few kilometers away, in Hesdigneul-lès-Boulogne, residents in fishing pants and boots walk in knee-deep brownish water under a dark sky.
Corentin Thelier no longer puts sandbags in front of his house because “they prevent water from getting in, but also from getting out again.” If water doesn’t get in through the door, then through the floor, the walls, the shower, the toilets. ..”
With a sunken face, he has already cleaned his house twice after the floods on Monday and Thursday. “But now I’m not saying I’ve given up, but it will stay that way as long as there’s water on the road.”
Schools in 200 municipalities will remain closed on Friday as on the previous day and train services will remain suspended on two sections (Boulogne-Etaples and Saint-Pol-Etaples) at least until Saturday “to ensure the safety of travelers and staff,” it says SNCF on X
Insurer Axa has registered “several hundred claims” in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and we are approaching the thousand mark, its regional director Thibaut Denys de Bonnaventure announced on Thursday.
A state of natural disaster must be declared on November 14th for the affected cities in the Pas-de-Calais and the north. According to the prefecture, more than 50 municipalities have submitted a file.
Although they are natural phenomena, floods, hurricanes and droughts can be exacerbated by global warming caused by human activities.
Floods are particularly costly disasters: between 1970 and 2019, they were responsible for 44% of all disasters and 31% of economic losses.