After a well-advanced decline despite persistent light rain, Pas-de-Calais is starting to look into reconstruction, for which Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has promised the rapid release of a “specific envelope”. “There will be a specific envelope” for the municipalities of Pas-de-Calais and the neighboring North affected by the floods of the last two weeks, promised Gérald Darmanin, during a trip to Audruicq, near Calais.
He entrusted the prefect of Pas-de-Calais with the mission of “quantifying the cost of all the destruction” in order to evaluate the amount of this envelope, which will be “released, I think, next week by the government”, he added. The damage promises to be significant: alongside Gérald Darmanin, prefect Jacques Billant listed “6,000 homes impacted by water, 160 businesses, 130 companies, 53 agricultural operations”.
The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announced on Tuesday during a trip to the department a “support fund” of 50 million euros intended to “support the most affected municipalities”.
Gérald Darmanin also assured that a second natural disaster meeting would take place next week, “and a third if necessary”. A total of 181 municipalities in Pas-de-Calais and 24 in the North have already been recognized as being in a state of natural disaster on Wednesday.
light rain
Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, will be in Pas-de-Calais on Monday “in particular to resolve the important issue” of insurers, Gérald Darmanin also announced. “In an exceptional situation, exceptional measures are needed,” replied the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, demanding the payment of advances on costs by insurers within eight days and that “experts come from all over France to avoid delays”.
Over the 30 days between October 18 and November 16, France recorded a record average accumulation of 237.3 mm: “across France, such quantities of rain had never been measured” on this duration, indicates Météo-France on Saturday. Thanks to a lull since Thursday, the water has receded in many municipalities in the department. It has been raining lightly in Calais since Saturday morning, and this rain “could slow down this decline, or even cause the levels to rise moderately”, warns Vigicrues on Saturday.
But the Pas-de-Calais prefecture does not expect “a significant impact on the dynamic of decline underway”. The weekend’s precipitation should have nothing to compare with what Pas-de-Calais has experienced in recent weeks, since the department is on rain alert for Saturday as well as Sunday, according to the latest Météo-France bulletin. .
” We cross fingers “
“We keep our fingers crossed,” Gwenaëlle Loire, the mayor of Saint-Léonard, a town of 3,000 inhabitants near Boulogne-sur-Mer, told AFP. Among residents, there remains a feeling of “apprehension”. “They are afraid, afraid that it will start again,” she adds. “People are cleaning up, the experts are starting to come by, and life is getting back on track,” she nevertheless rejoices.
In recent days, there have been successive signs of improvement: almost all of the schools closed at the start of the week were able to gradually reopen on Thursday and Friday, and the region announced on Friday a “total resumption of school and intercity transport from Saturday”, “subject to the practicability of the roads”.
If 1,500 evacuations have been carried out since November 6, only one had to be carried out on Friday, according to the prefecture. The human toll was five lightly injured, including a firefighter who was injured in a fall on Friday in Etaples. As of Friday evening, 5,200 people were still subject to water restrictions, and 50 homes were without electricity.