Friday, November 8, the Community of Communes of Pays d'Orthe and Arrigans brought together for the fourth time since October 2023 (Climate Risk Resilience Day) a working group made up of elected officials and volunteer citizens, impacted by the risk flood, with the aim of soon communicating to the entire population.
They were there to hear Joëlle Meurisse, representing the prefect, and Olivier Loustau, from Sdis 40. Because we should not imagine the victims abandoned to their sad fate. Whatever the risk (climatic, health, accidental and polluting), an organization puts itself in working order before the crisis, going up the ladder to a potential interministerial crisis unit.
Informing populations remains the priority, information – and not the sometimes alarmist relay of news channels which poorly translate reality – adapted to the situation without, of course, creating panic, because fear is always a bad advisor. and can lead people to put themselves in danger: taking their vehicle without worrying about rising water for example, or even calling emergency services in the middle of the night to be evacuated when they refused help the day before, thus putting rescuers in danger.
The burden of cleaning
Crisis management must therefore be organized at the municipal level with a director and operations commander, in permanent contact with the prefecture. All communication tools are activated to alert the population, while an operational center is set up to coordinate interventions. When the flood is there, the long wait begins, interspersed with helping goods and people when necessary.
And when the water recedes, there are other problems for the population and local elected officials. From now on, firefighters will no longer clean municipal roads, nor will they clean homes and businesses, as was done before, their mission stopping at rescue and possible pumping. In anticipation, Sdis has provided the Community of Communes with a reform truck which can be used for this purpose.
