The return of winter makes us all the more fearful of floods as the level of water tables remains high and other French regions, in the Center-East and South-East, have suffered devastating floods in recent weeks.
In October 2024, the excess rain reached 40% compared to 1991-2020 normals in France, according to Météo France.
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Floods in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais
In Pas-de-Calais, 315 municipalities were recognized as being in a state of natural disaster and some 540,000 inhabitants of five watersheds impacted to varying degrees by the floods which punctuated the whole of last autumn and winter.
“As soon as it rains I look at the water and I calculate how it rises,” sighs another Blendecquoise, Marie-Pierre Dascotte, smoking a cigarette, her eyes tired.
Living on the ground floor, she applied for new social housing to leave, unconvinced by the work supposed to limit the risk of flooding.
Cleaning and pumping
To repair the damage but also prevent such an episode from happening again, 633 emergency works were carried out in one year, financed at least 70% by the State, such as the cleaning of watercourses, and 174 works structuring structures are planned, creation of flood expansion zones or spillways.
A quarter of these structuring operations have been completed, “around fifty” have not started, specifies the prefecture.
“Was this work necessary? Yes. Are they sufficient? Certainly not,” supports prefect Jacques Billant, who wishes to accelerate the implementation of operations. “Until March, we were still underwater,” he explains, “the approach was difficult in many areas.”
Another crucial point: the strengthening of pumping capacities, which were lacking last year. One of the large capacity pumps at the Mardyck lock (North), broken down during the latest floods, is now operational, announces the prefecture. Two new pumps must be commissioned in 2025 and temporary devices are planned for this winter. Finally, firefighters will be equipped with mobile pumps.
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In total, the State mobilized more than 262 million euros in Nord-Pas-de-Calais following these floods.
To speed up the work, certain procedures have been simplified, but deadlines remain difficult to reduce. “We wasted time,” laments André Flajolet, president of the Artois-Picardie basin committee. He lists the obstacles: bringing projects to the attention of the State, access to private land, etc.
“We are better prepared, but we are not ready,” he concludes, pointing to a central problem: the management of the sea, which “does not absorb enough”. The cause is the rise in its level, but also silted river mouths or work carried out by individuals without taking into account their wider consequences.
Climate refugees
In the longer term, discussions are underway on “territorial and agricultural planning”, to take into account climate change, which increases the frequency of extreme rains. The artificialization of soils also accelerates rainwater runoff.
In September, the Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher announced that she wanted to make Pas-de-Calais a “laboratory” for crisis management linked to climate change.
The precipitation last autumn and winter represented “1.5 times the 100-year flood”, but this extraordinary episode risks “becoming ordinary”, warned the minister.
The 1,000 km2 triangle between Calais, Dunkirk and Saint-Omer, almost entirely located below sea level at high tide, is one of the French areas most vulnerable to these upheavals.
“We are the first climate refugees in France,” assures Vincent Maquignon, now a former resident of Blendecques. The house he lived in for 24 years was bought by the State via the Barnier fund and will be destroyed because it is too vulnerable to flooding.
At this stage, 67 houses are eligible for repurchase by this fund, while 891 people have been rehoused by the State after the floods.
