The decline was short-lived. While a drop in the level of life-saving water had been observed for three days in Pas-de-Calais, shaken by flooding for two weeks, this was slowed down by new precipitation this Monday.
The rains that fell on Pas-de-Calais on Sunday “should continue until Monday in the middle of the day” and risk “raising the levels of rivers,” warns Vigicrues. Pas-de-Calais is placed on orange “rain flood” and yellow “floods and winds” alert until Monday at midday, according to Météo-France.
Localized overflows
The floods, which have left five people injured since November 6, have also affected 6,000 homes, 160 businesses, 130 businesses and 53 farms according to the prefecture. A regional elected official estimated the number of victims at more than 10,000, a certain number of whom cannot return to their homes.
Vigicrues fears that on the Canche, in the south-west of the department, the decline will be “thwarted by recent rains, always causing localized overflows”. The organization also forecasts new floods between Sunday evening and Monday morning on the Liane, the Hem and the Aa, some of the rivers most at risk in recent days.
Bruno Le Maire on site this Monday
It is precisely in the Aa basin that the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, is expected on Monday afternoon, who will meet in Arques then Saint-Omer with “local stakeholders and representatives of the transport sector. insurance, in order to accelerate care and support for disaster victims,” Bercy announced on Sunday.
“The compensation must be exemplary and our response to the economic world must be exemplary,” argued the Minister of the Economy on Sunday in a daily interview The voice of the Northinsisting that “no business should go out of business because it was a victim of these floods”.
Additional pumps installed
To enable the department to overcome future precipitation, additional pumps were installed on Sunday, “to reach the unprecedented capacity of 100,000 m3/hour”, specified the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on X, ex-Twitter .
These new rains come at a time when Pas-de-Calais has been experiencing a slow but saving decline for three days. “We still have water in several areas” around Montreuil-sur-Mer and Saint-Omer, “but the decline is starting on all the waterways,” the Pas prefecture told AFP. -de-Calais Sunday morning. “The situation is clearly improving,” she added.
This figure demonstrates this: only one evacuation was carried out on Friday, and none on Saturday, compared to nearly 1,500 between November 6 and 16, indicates the prefecture. For example, the water has clearly receded in Maresville, a town close to the Canche which suffered a “tsunami” last week, in the words of mayor Maxime Delianne, and where the Dordonne, a river which crosses the village, has finally found his bed Sunday morning.
A specific envelope for affected municipalities
“Now the priority is cleaning,” adds Mr. Delianne, assuring that “in some houses, there is nothing left”, the water having carried away or destroyed everything in its path. In some homes, it is up to 1.50 m, he emphasizes.
To help with reconstruction, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, promised on Saturday during a trip to Audruicq, near Calais, “a specific envelope” for the affected municipalities. 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. A new natural disaster recognition meeting is planned for next week.
Although they constitute natural phenomena, floods, cyclones and droughts can be amplified by global warming generated by human activities.