Flooded rivers, flooded streets, damaged houses: Pas-de-Calais in France was trying to assess the extent of the damage on Friday after a night of torrential rain, which followed an already destructive rise in water on Tuesday.
“We’ve been like this for a week and I can’t take it anymore,” says Corentin Thelier, 27, resident of Hesdigneul-lès-Boulogne, a town also affected by floods on November 2, on the passage of Storm Ciaran.
The department has been placed on red alert since Thursday by Météo-France for both floods and rain and floods, an episode which should only begin to fade at the end of Friday afternoon.
Seine-Maritime and Somme, two departments locally very affected by bad weather overnight, as well as the North, are on orange alert.
“There will be a lull after 4 p.m.,” the prefecture of the northern defense and security zone 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 is also underway on Friday morning on a farm in Montreuil where around a hundred cattle were saved.
AFP
The death toll remains at three minor injuries since Monday.
Precipitation levels over the entire episode are close to the usual amount over a month, Météo-France said.
According to the prefecture, “the expected accumulations at the height of the episode” of rain between 4 p.m. Thursday and 4 p.m. Friday “are of the order of 30 to 50 mm in Pas-de-Calais” and “70-80 mm on the ‘west of the Somme’.
“Concerns”
The lull expected at the end of the day “should last all weekend”, but with already “some concerns” about a new rainy episode at the start of next week, said the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu on “FranceInfo” .
No less than 130 municipalities, according to the prefecture, have been affected in recent days by flooding in the department, already affected by storm Ciaran, then 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 Liane is “much lower” than that observed “at the start of the week”, but overflows “are still possible”.
Conversely, the levels of the Canche risk “reaching or even exceeding the floods of the beginning of the week” and “generalized and damaging overflows are to be expected” concerning the Aa.
Two large-capacity pumps, capable of absorbing 5,400 m3 per hour, were deployed and a third had to be deployed quickly, in order to limit the damage, the prefecture indicated.
“Remain vigilant for your loved ones and for yourselves,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote Thursday evening on X to the inhabitants 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 based in Saint-Étienne-au-Mont, where 300 houses were damaged overnight from Monday to Tuesday.
Tired
A few km away, in Hesdigneul-lès-Boulogne, residents walk around in fishermen’s pants and boots, in knee-deep brownish water, under a dark sky.
Corentin Thelier no longer puts sandbags in front of his house, because “it stops the water from getting in but it also stops it from getting out. Water, if it doesn’t enter through the door, it enters through the floors, the walls, the shower, the toilets…”
With his face drawn, he has already cleaned his home twice, after the floods of Monday and Thursday. “But now, I’m not going to say that I’ve given up, but it will stay like that as long as there is water on the road.”
Schools in 200 municipalities remain closed on Friday as the day before, and train traffic remains interrupted on two sections (Boulogne-Etaples and Saint-Pol-Etaples) at least until Saturday “in order to guarantee the safety of travelers and staff », indicated the SNCF on X.
The insurer Axa has recorded “several hundred claims” in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and we are “getting closer” to a thousand, its regional director, Thibaut Denys de Bonnaventure, announced on Thursday.
The state of natural disaster must be triggered on November 14 for the affected towns in Pas-de-Calais and the Nord. More than 50 municipalities have submitted a file, according to the prefecture.
Although they constitute natural phenomena, floods, cyclones and droughts can be amplified by global warming generated by human activities.
Floods are particularly costly disasters: between 1970 and 2019, they accounted for 44% of all disasters and 31% of economic losses.