(Neuville-sous-Montreuil) President Emmanuel Macron is visiting Pas-de-Calais on Tuesday, affected for several days by devastating floods and still on alert Monday evening due to a rainy episode which could further aggravate the situation.
“The Head of State will express his support and that of the entire Nation to the inhabitants affected by the successive episodes of flooding as well as to all the rescue forces mobilized”, indicated the Élysée in a press release.
The Head of State, expected at 11:30 a.m., will be accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, and the Minister for SMEs, Olivia Grégoire.
Matignon at the same time announced the convening of an interministerial crisis unit “to coordinate all state services”, which was to meet Monday evening under the leadership of Elisabeth Borne’s chief of staff, the Prime Minister being in travel to Ireland.
Pas-de-Calais, which has already suffered the storm Ciaran on November 2, record floods on November 7 and intense precipitation Thursday and Friday, will remain on Tuesday on yellow alert for wind, rain-flooding and waves-submersion.
The seven rivers in the department monitored by Vigicrues (Canche, Lys plaine, Hem, Aa, Liane, Lys upstream, Lawe-Clarence) are on orange vigilance, according to the 10 p.m. bulletin. Significant to very significant flooding is expected on these rivers, but at lower levels than Friday.
” We are scared ”
The rains, on already saturated soils, remained light on Monday, but should be “more significant” on Tuesday, according to the forecasting organization.
In this context, the prefecture has decided to keep nurseries and educational establishments closed on Monday and Tuesday in 279 municipalities in the department, or 388 establishments in total.
Météo-France forecasts for the week an alternation of days without rain followed by precipitation: showers on Wednesday, calm until Friday then a resumption of bad weather until Monday.
In Merville, a rural area in the North on the Pas-de-Calais border, the ravines are overflowing, the fields and streets of the city center are flooded.
“The water has been rising since Friday, it’s not going down. We wait, we can’t do anything. There is 60 cm of water in the middle of the road,” laments Alain Bacrot, a 73-year-old retiree, who wore large boots to leave his house.
“Everything is full everywhere, it’s stressful. We are afraid of having to leave,” sighs his wife Annie. In his garden, the seats of the swings tickle the water.
City agents bring sandbags to residents to place in front of doors to prevent water from seeping in and concrete blocks to raise furniture.
According to the senator and vice-president of the regional council, Franck Dhersin, more than 10,000 victims have already been identified. “Many craftsmen, traders and SMEs/SMIs are affected,” he underlined on Monday.
“Disasters”
The presidents of the department and the region, Jean-Claude Leroy and Xavier Bertrand, called on Monday, in a letter to Emmanuel Macron, for “national solidarity” to come to the aid of the victims.
The death toll since the start of the episode remains at four minor injuries. A sixty-year-old woman also lost her life in Bailleul (North) at the wheel of her car, found on Saturday in a flooded ditch, without the Dunkirk public prosecutor’s office being able to establish with certainty a link with bad weather.
According to the prefecture, 550 homes remain without electricity and 7,200 are subject to restrictions on water use.
Rail traffic is interrupted on two sections (Boulogne-Etaples and Saint-Pol-Etaples) “until further notice”, indicated the SNCF on the X network. More than 90 road axes are cut.
Farmers from the FNSEA blocked the A16 at the entrance to Calais on Monday morning to ask the State for equipment to “avoid farms and residents from polders (artificial expanse of land reclaimed from water) » to experience such “catastrophes”.
Some 207 municipalities have submitted a file to be recognized as a natural disaster, a decision expected on Tuesday.
Although they constitute natural phenomena, floods, cyclones and droughts can be amplified by global warming generated by human activities.