(Arques) The French government announced Thursday “exceptional responses” for the north of the country which experienced the start of a new episode of extraordinary floods, after that of November.
The decline has now begun, but many localities still have their feet in the water. In the Ardennes, firefighters rescued a driver who had entered a flooded road on Thursday morning.
Part of France was hit Tuesday and Wednesday by heavy rains and a septuagenarian died Wednesday in his submerged car in the west of the country.
The floods are particularly affecting the Pas-de-Calais department, classified as red alert, but other neighboring departments are also affected.
On the Aa, a coastal river classified red since Tuesday, the flood peak was reached “in the early evening” on Wednesday, according to the monitoring organization Vigicrues.
“The recession began during the night from Wednesday to Thursday” but the new rains forecast for Thursday “could cause moderate reactions or slow down the current recession”.
During a visit to Pas-de-Calais, the French Minister for Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu promised “exceptional responses”, due to the “exceptional situation”.
He raised the possibility of not requesting a new file to classify the municipalities already affected as natural disasters “considering that it is the same episode which is continuing”, 169 municipalities being affected by this new episode, compared to 282 in November.
In addition to the emergency fund of 50 million euros announced after the record floods which left four people injured and significant damage in November, “we will obviously have to increase our level of support”, he added.
Isolated houses
In Thérouanne, a town of 1,200 inhabitants invaded by water for the second time, the college was affected, and in the neighboring town of Arques, the water reached the town center, forcing residents to evacuate, sometimes with the help from firefighters deployed with boats, or tractors driven by neighbors.
Residents are worried about these seemingly endless floods, sometimes affecting the same neighborhoods, with the soil still saturated with water.
“We need work now,” insisted the president of the region Xavier Bertrand (right), calling on ministers to speed up decisions.
Aerial images of Arques show streets and gardens submerged over large areas, where houses are isolated by water.
PHOTO CHARLES CABY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
In Pas-de-Calais, 500 homes remain without electricity and 2,000 residents of access to drinking water, said prefect Jacques Billant on Thursday.
Intensive pumping means must begin to be deployed on Thursday.
“Four pumps from the Netherlands, two pumps from the Czech Republic and two pumps from Slovakia” left “towards the Nord and Pas-de-Calais” as part of the Union’s civil protection mechanism European Commission, the European Commission said on its website on Wednesday.
According to the general direction of French Civil Security, they should be operational on Friday.
Bad weather also hit neighboring Belgium, where around forty homes were affected in the province of Antwerp on Wednesday by a tornado, which tore off roofs without causing any casualties.
Although they constitute natural phenomena, floods, cyclones and droughts can be amplified by global warming generated by human activities.