“Initiated on all rivers”, the clear decline observed for three days in Pas-de-Calais could be thwarted on Sunday November 19 by further precipitation, which should intensify during the day.
“We still have water in several areas” around Montreuil-sur-Mer and Saint-Omer, “but the decline is starting on all the waterways,” reported to Agence France-Presse ( AFP) the prefecture of Pas-de-Calais. “The situation is clearly improving,” she added. A sign of this improvement, only one evacuation was carried out in the last forty-eight hours, out of nearly 1,500 carried out since November 6.
But, warns Vigicrues in its latest bulletin, new rains expected on Sunday “will intensify as the day goes on” and “should cause the level of rivers to rise again”. Pas-de-Calais is placed on yellow alert for rain-flood, floods and winds for the day on Sunday, and again for rain-flood and floods on Monday, according to the latest Météo-France bulletin.
Vigicrues fears in particular a reaction on the Canche, in the south-west of the department, where “the levels are still high and the decline is thwarted”. On water-saturated soils, any further precipitation can have negative effects. Until then, in Maresville, a town near the Canche which suffered a “tsunami” last week, in the words of its mayor, Maxime Delianne, “the water is dropping well, it went down again last night”, he rejoices.
205 municipalities in a state of natural disaster
The Dordonne, a river which crosses the village, finally found its bed on Sunday morning, he assures, while certain buildings had been invaded by nearly 1.50 meters of water at the height of the flood. “Now the priority is cleaning,” he adds, assuring that “in some houses, there is nothing left”, the water having washed away or destroyed everything.
The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, will be in Arques and Saint-Omer, on the Aa, on Monday, where he will meet “local stakeholders and representatives of the insurance sector, in order to accelerate the support and support for disaster victims,” Bercy announced on Sunday. He will succeed the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who 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.