This Thursday, January 4, part of the Hauts-de-France region is still underwater with Pas-de-Calais on red alert for risk of flooding.
Since Tuesday January 2, the coastal river Aa in Pas-de-Calais has been placed on red alert by Vigicrues. On his side Meteo France also placed the department on red alert. The departments of Nord, Aisne, Ardennes and Meuse are on orange alert. Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle came out of vigilance during the night from Wednesday to Thursday. In the departments concerned, Vigicrues has also placed certain rivers in orange such as the Oise upstream and the Aisne upstream.
Since the start of this new episode of flooding in the north of France, 371 people have been evacuated in the Pas-de-Calais department according to information from the prefecture. She also added this Thursday that the situation required the intervention of firefighters on more than 400 occasions, largely as part of evacuations. Vigicrues announced this Thursday, January 4 that the Aa is “generally at the same level as in November” which had reached a historic level.
The prefecture also specified that 74 departmental roads were closed this Wednesday from 12:30 p.m. The organization also added that although a slight increase is still expected, the peak flood has been reached with a level of 2.81m. Vigicrues specifies in fact that “a lull in precipitation allowed the beginning of a clear decline this night over the entire section.”
Olivier Véran and Christophe Béchu are going to Pas-de-Calais this Thursday, to several towns in the department. The government spokesperson explained on the microphone of RMC-BFMTV this morning that this ministerial trip aims to “support the forces who are on the ground, support the elected officials who are there, listen to the residents, look, observe, put images into words”. He also added that “the work of agents on the ground” could be praised.
According to him, 500 residents of the department are still without electricity. Of the 10,000 homes without electricity this Wednesday, the distribution company Enedis communicated that 95% of them were replenished at the end of the day. Visiting the victims in an accommodation center in the department this Wednesday, the president of the Republicans of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, hoped that “the work must begin now”.
In order to accelerate the decline, four civil security pumps must be installed around the town of Mardyck in the North from this Thursday. According to the General Directorate of Civil Security, other pumping means are “being transported from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Netherlands to be operational on Friday”.