(Hesdigneul-lès-Boulogne) Tossed since Tuesday between torrential rains and the comings and goings of floods, Pas-de-Calais experienced the beginning of a lull in the rains on Friday evening, but the floods persist, after a week which caused thousands of victims.
The heavier precipitation than expected in the afternoon swelled the Aa, the Liane and the Canche, kept on red alert for floods by the monitoring organization Vigicrues.
“We are at 10,000 victims, and in some houses, the water has been stagnating for 10 days, permeating the walls”, indicates to AFP the senator and vice-president of the regional council Franck Dhersin, who says he expects new flood records during the coming night.
“The population is tired, they can’t take it anymore, they wonder when it will stop and so do we,” sighs Bruno Debove, municipal councilor of Hesdigneul-lès-Boulogne, a town which has found itself on several occasions isolated by water.
His eyes red with fatigue, he worries about “the people who are affected, the crisis and the post-crisis, which will be very complicated”.
Already affected by storm Ciaran on November 2, then the floods of the Liane, the Aa and the Canche on Tuesday, Pas-de-Calais had been placed on red alert since Thursday by Météo-France, both for floods, rains and floods.
It returned to yellow at 7 p.m. for rain and floods, thanks to a “clear lull”, according to Météo-France.
But the Minister of Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu expressed his “concerns” about a new rainy episode at the start of next week.
PHOTO SAMEER AL-DOUMY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Scene in Neuville-sous-Montreuil
Four lightly injured
A total of “247 municipalities are still affected by flooding”, in particular around Saint-Omer, Boulogne, and Montreuil, underlined the Pas-de-Calais prefecture in its 9:30 p.m. bulletin.
The death toll is four minor injuries since Monday in the area concerned, where nearly 350 firefighters take turns to ensure duty. They have carried out 1531 interventions since November 2.
Water invaded stables, trapped vehicles, and forced many residents to leave their homes on Friday, including the 19 residents of a retirement home in Nielles-lès-Bléquin who were evacuated as a precaution.
In Affringues near Saint-Omer, 75 tonnes of trout from a fish farm were washed away by the waters, Philippe Jorgensen, a manager of this company, said on Friday, confirming information from Voix du Nord.
Very large capacity pumps, each capable of emptying an Olympic swimming pool in 15 minutes, have been deployed in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais.
“Since the two big downpours, it has gone up five centimeters,” laments Thomas Yoann, whose Longfossé garage is flooded. “I did everything I could […] I called the firefighters, they lent me a big pump, but it continues to rise, and now it’s catastrophic. »
Road axes cut
In Hesdigneul-lès-Boulogne, not far from there, residents walk around in fishermen’s pants and boots, in knee-deep brownish water.
“We’ve been like this for a week and I can’t take it anymore,” says Corentin Thelier, 27 years old.
He 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…”
In Saint-Omer, the Red Cross urgently opened an accommodation center in a gymnasium with a capacity of around a hundred beds.
The interruption of rail traffic on two sections (Boulogne-Etaples and Saint-Pol-Etaples) was extended until Tuesday “in the morning”, indicated the SNCF on X (formerly Twitter). Nearly a hundred roads are also cut.
The civil protection of Pas-de-Calais has launched a call for donations and set up a number “to connect” disaster victims needing help clearing their homes with those ready to help them.
More than 50 municipalities have submitted a file to be recognized as a natural disaster, a decision is expected on Tuesday.
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.