It all started with a thin crack, running discreetly on the facade of the family house in Régine*, in Côte-d’Or. At the end of 2021, the damage is so small that this forty-year-old thinks first of all of an “aesthetic crack”, a simple mark of time on this building built in 1870. The weeks pass, the month of May 2022 is the most hot of the 21st century, that of July, the driest since 1959. At the end of this scorching summer, Régine finds her family cocoon for a few days, in which her in-laws have regularly gathered for six generations. It’s the cold shower. The simple crack has become “a gaping wound”, which opens on both sides of the building. Very quickly, the Dijonnaise reacted, contacted an independent expert who noticed other breaks, and called for a soil study. The verdict falls a few weeks later: like 10.4 million individual houses in France, according to the latest census of the Ministry of Ecological Transitionthe building was built on an area exposed to the phenomenon of shrinkage-swelling of clay soils (RGA).
On these terrains, the clay soils shrink during periods of drought, then swell in the presence of water. Over time, the successive movements of the ground can destroy the structures that have been built there, or their foundations. “We are not talking about simple cracks to be sealed with a little resin: to save the house, it is often necessary to review the foundations, lay micropiles, then repair all the interior and exterior damage”, specifies Yves Moalic, referent in Côte-d’Or for the association The forgotten of the heat wave, which helps disaster victims. “It is obviously extremely invasive, and extremely expensive”, he specifies, referring to amounts which regularly reach “200,000 euros” of work. But, in order for the victims to be able to obtain compensation from their insurance, their municipality must above all be recognized as in a state of natural drought disaster. The mayor has a period of twenty-four months after the occurrence of the phenomenon to file his application for recognition with the prefect of the department or online. If the situation corresponds to the criteria pre-established by the government, the “Catnat” guarantee scheme (natural disaster), created in 1982 and supposed to cover “non-insurable material damage having had as a determining cause the abnormal intensity of an agent natural”, takes place. Then begins Régine’s first “obstacle course”.
13% of requests accepted
“Despite the cracks observed on many houses, our mayor, like many others, had never made this request for recognition”, she laments, preferring to keep the name of her town quiet while her file is in progress. . Even before declaring her loss to the insurance company, she had to gather her neighbors – also affected –, notify the elected official, prepare the files, and even contact a law firm to ensure that the request filed by the town hall would not be revoked. Because all the complaints made by the municipalities are far from being accepted by the State: in 2021, only 13.3% of them were accepted, according to an information report tabled in the National Assembly in March 2023 by MPs Sandra Marsaud and Sandrine Rousseau. In a February 2022 report, the Court of Auditors even points out that, over the past nine years, approximately 50% of municipal requests for Catnat recognition under the RGA have not been successful. This device “finds its limits today”, deplore the authors of the document, who regret the “unfair and unsuitable nature [du procédé, qui doit] lead the public authorities to question its very qualification as a natural disaster”.
Régine confirms: early May, a decree published in Official newspaper finally recognized the state of natural drought disaster for 3,400 municipalities, including its own. “But it took months and, in the meantime, the damage has only increased. Today there are 200,000 euros worth of work, compared to 50,000 last September.” The beams of the family house are moving, its Burgundy flagstones – so appreciated by the owners – are cracking, its doors no longer close. The victim, who has thirty days to notify her insurance, has just contacted the latter. But, after having spent more than 5,000 euros for various expertise, soil studies and legal fees, Régine is not fooled. “I know that from now on a new Way of the Cross begins.”
“There is more than 300,000 euros worth of work”
Over the 2015-2018 period, during which insurers declare having recorded more than 196,000 drought claims, 53% were in fact closed. In 52% of cases, the federation of insurance companies France Assureurs indicates that the damage observed was not considered as “consecutive to an RGA phenomenon”. At the same time, no less than 19% of the victims would not have returned to their insurers after finding the damage, 13% suffered damage less than the deductible, 5% were told that the cracks were before or after the period in question. by the Catnat decree, and 2% were not covered by their contract. “To prove that your claim is indeed linked to the drought, you need time, money and patience”, sums up Yves Moalic, of the Forgotten Heatwave association, which estimates that 70% of disaster victims followed by his association in Côte-d’Or were “abandoned” by their insurance from the first expertise. “Generally, additional causes are found by insurance experts, such as the presence of vegetation around the house, poor drainage of rainwater or bad foundations”, explains the departmental referent. To counter these arguments, the victims must then hire their own expert, or launch costly legal proceedings. “Some dip into their savings, make loans, sell their car or… give up, lack of weapons to fight,” he sighs.
Nadège, a 49-year-old salesperson, has had bitter experience of this. In 2017, she noticed the first cracks on the facade of her home in Perrigny-lès-Dijon, 6 kilometers from the Burgundian capital. Like Régine, the mother of the family had to wait several months before her town was recognized as being in a state of natural disaster, at the end of the summer of 2018. The documents were sent to the insurance company in the process, then eighteen months go by, with no news. When the expert comes to see the damage, Nadège is disillusioned. “He closed the file in five minutes, telling me that the drought had nothing to do with it and that it was a fault in the construction of the house”, she recalls. The victim fights back, calls in a counter-expert, who confirms the link between the cracks and the drought, then obtains a confrontation with the insurance expert. The latter reconsiders his first observation, but classifies the file again, this time evoking a tree planted in front of the house and designated as responsible. It will take two soil analyses, a legal expertise, 2,500 euros in legal fees and three additional years for Nadège to win his case: his house was indeed built in an area exposed to RGA, and his insurance is in the balance. obligation to indemnify him. But, in the meantime, the damage has become impressive. “My ceiling is completely cracked, the partitions are separated from each other, and there is a gap of 2 centimeters between the baseboards and the floor. The first quotes amount to 200,000 euros of work, I hope that the insurance will be at the height”, blows the forty-year-old, who considers herself “lucky” despite everything. “At least I managed to prove my sinister without leaving too many feathers there.”
Representative of the Forgotten heat wave in Loiret, Sandra cannot say the same. In her “dream house”, bought with her husband using a thirty-year loan, cracks appeared in 2003. Successive droughts only worsened the situation, to the point that the couple invested in 2011 , 60,000 euros to plug the breaches. “We thought we were in peace, but the house started to re-create seven years later,” says the mother, who waits each year for her town to be recognized as being in a situation of natural disaster to hope for compensation. In 2019, the long-awaited decree is finally published. But the insurance refuses any accompaniment. “She considers that the damage predates the 2019 drought, and that as such we cannot be compensated. We can no longer do anything,” she says, while various experts have estimated the amount of damage. work required at more than 300,000 euros. “It is deeply unfair and, above all, it is haphazard luck. It all depends on the understanding of your insurer, the work carried out, the declarations you have made or not made.” Of the eight victims of the street where Sandra lives, only one was able to obtain reimbursement from his insurance. This neighbor had never reported the cracks in his house and was therefore able to attribute them to the 2019 drought.
2022, annus horribilis
“Our last hope to come to the aid of the victims is that the law evolves”, concludes Yves Moalic, who salutes the bill carried by Sandrine Rousseau on the subject. Adopted at first reading on April 6, the text provides in particular for modifying the criteria for recognizing the state of natural disaster, in order to increase the number of municipalities concerned. To rebalance the relationship between the insurer and the insured, it also establishes a simple presumption of causality: when a state of natural disaster is declared, it will be “presumed that the determining cause of the damage is the shrinkage-swelling of the clay”, and the insurer will have the obligation to take charge of a soil analysis expertise. The aggravation of damage during a drought will also be considered as a new element, giving rise to the right to compensation.
“In the years to come, it will absolutely be necessary to accelerate in terms of prevention in the face of the RGA phenomenon, while perpetuating the Catnat scheme thanks to an increase in its contribution”, pleads for its part the federation France Assureurs. In a study published in September 2022, the organization recalls that, on average, 29,500 drought-related claims were compensated each year over the period 1989-2021, for a total amount of 16 billion euros. For the period 2020-2050, this impressive sum could be multiplied by three, and reach 43 billion euros. In this simulation, five departments alone account for two-thirds of the increase in claims: Haute-Garonne, Gironde, Bouches-du-Rhône, Tarn-et-Garonne and Tarn. “The year 2022 is already an annus horribilis on the front of climatic events, and in particular drought”, alert to L’Express Florence Lustman, president of France Assureurs. In 2022, it specifies that the cumulative cost of damage linked to the RGA phenomenon reaches 2.9 billion euros – it was 1 billion over the previous five years.
*Name has been changed.