The departmental archives of the Somme victims of a flood in Amiens

The departmental archives of the Sommelocated at 61 rue Saint-Fuscien in Amiensare closed to the public until further notice due to a pipe break having led to a flood.

This disaster affects all levels of the premises where heritage documents are kept: 210 meters of documents, including 100 meters directly affected by water damage, were evacuated.

5 basement levels affected by water damage

During the weekend of January 11 and 12, 2025, a pipe break in the urban drinking water supply network, upstream of 61 rue Saint-Fuscien in Amiens, caused flooding in the 5 levels below. floor of the main site of the Departmental Archives of the Somme, corresponding to the conservation stores.

The water flowed through a pipe in the first basement and then spread through microcracks in the ceilings on the lower floors.

The disaster on the main Archives site in Saint-Fuscien, noted on Monday January 13, 2025 during the first consultation requests from users of the reading room, affected several areas of the conservation spaces as well as around a hundred meters of heritage documents (archives from the period 1790-1940: registration, land register, municipal administration, military affairs, education, and archives from the period after 1940).

Five partially flooded premises have already been cleaned, 210 m of documents were evacuated as of Monday January 13, including 100 m of documents directly affected by the water damage.

Department teams mobilized to preserve documents

Damp documents are placed in all available work spaces to allow them to dry and thus limit the development of mold as much as possible.

In the coming weeks, drying operations, monitoring (sanitary status control) and regular handling (sheet by sheet) of all documents that are still damp (registers/bundles) will continue to ventilate them as much as possible.

The priority objective remains to dry out the damaged documents and prevent a general infestation of the evacuated collections. However, great vigilance must be maintained in the coming weeks.

In order to devote ourselves to this sensitive mission, the building is closed to the public until further notice.

The Departmental Archives team as well as the Department’s services are mobilized for the preservation of documents and a rapid reopening to the public.

Until then, users can stay informed and consult the digitized documents on the website: archives.somme.fr.

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