In 2025, Paris City Hall will offer residents of the capital “a major awareness-raising operation” about the risk of flooding.
This exercise aims to prepare for a flood of the Seine.
The municipality's plan includes 50 concrete actions.
Prepare for the worst. This is the objective of themajor awareness campaign“that the Paris town hall is going to propose to its residents. The worst? A possible flooding of the Seine. The exercise will take place in 2025, the municipality announced on Friday November 8, unveiling a program of “resilience“.
“All Parisians will be invited to meetings in district town halls, with Internet access, to explain to them what behavior to expect from everyone in the event of flooding,” detailed Mayor Anne Hidalgo. The authorities, “are ready, with plans and regular exercises on the Seine, but I would like us to be able to raise awareness among the general population of Paris, to give them the capacity for action by informing themselves and training”, she added.
“In situ crisis exercise”
In case of flooding “you should not go down to your parking lot to take the car out, because that’s where you are trapped,” detailed the mayor, while many underground car parks were completely flooded in Valencia and its region in Spain, bereaved by historic floods. A “in situ crisis exercise” simulating a flood of the Seine, in conjunction with the police headquarters, is planned, said the town hall. Parisians will also be made aware of the measures to “improve the resilience of their homes”, while the municipality will carry out “experimental developments to reduce urban runoff”.
The news “resilience strategy” of Paris in the face of risks (flood, pandemic, attack, cyber-attack, heatwave, etc.), which will be voted on at the next Paris Council in mid-November, aims in particular to “develop risk culture, that is to say knowledge of local risks and the reflexes to adopt in the event of a crisis, and to strengthen local mutual aid between Parisians”, explains Pénélope Komitès, deputy mayor in charge of innovation, attractiveness and resilience.
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The plan includes 50 concrete actions, including regular crisis exercises with the population, the implementation of a plan “very hot“to protect people on the streets during heatwaves and the creation of a”resilience campus“.
