In Pas-de-Calais, a motorist saved at the last minute from drowning

In Pas-de-Calais, Monday November 6, a person stuck in his car was narrowly saved from drowning. In Bézinghem, a town on the Côte d’Opale, while water invades everything, a motorist finds himself swept away while crossing a bridge. The river then transformed into a large torrent of water. The car found itself stuck against a barrier.

Witnesses at the scene called for help, but, understanding the emergency, three men, farmer brothers, made a makeshift bridge with pallets and managed to reach the vehicle with agricultural equipment. They then break the windshield with a hammer and take a man in his sixties out of the cabin. Just afterwards, the car is dragged away and disappears to the bottom of the river.

>> Pas-de-Calais: “We have never experienced such a situation”, worries Frédéric Cuviller, the mayor of Boulogne-sur-Mer

Disasters are born from these moments of mutual aid where, as the American philosopher Rebecca Solnit writes: “Citizens organize themselves and take care of each other, in a different kind of anarchy”.

In every natural disaster, we find beautiful stories, stories of children pulled out of the rubble after several days, of strangers who throw themselves into the water to swim to the aid of other strangers. Once the storm has passed, the link persists: mutual aid between neighbors, traders who shelter those who no longer have a roof over their heads, neighbors who unload their belongings for those who have lost everything. Others help clear the roads, clean the houses, still others make donations or launch fundraisers to help rebuild.