2023-11-10 19:02:00
The situation remains tense this evening in Flanders. The Yser, this coastal watercourse, threatens to flood the Westhoek region despite the drop in intensity of precipitation in the middle of the afternoon. Firefighters are monitoring the situation very closely.
The images are impressive: plains completely underwater, neighborhoods and roads flooded, even inaccessible in certain places. The Westhoek landscape is transformed by water.
In Stavele, residents protect their homes as best they can using sandbags. “Now we have raised the sand wall so that water does not get inside. We never know. We try to keep it out“, shows us a resident.
This afternoon, the sky offered a little respite to the inhabitants of the town, but the level of the Yser remains particularly high. This is the consequence of the heavy rains which fell on the north-east of France, on the other side of the border.
Some are a little more spared by the waters: “Our house is sheltered because we live higher up compared to the rest of the village. But I came to help the residents protect themselves and put sandbags“, explains a young man.
The emergency services work day and night. They install water pumps in several strategic locations. A helicopter flies over the region to identify the areas most at risk: “It can go up very quickly. That’s the problem with water. It’s never clear, what the water will do, what the river will do“, comments Christof Dejaegher, mayor of Popringe.
Nathalie never leaves her soap factory. This situation reminds him of unpleasant memories, the floods of 2021: “Everything here was full of water. There was 70 centimeters of water in my workshop and it was really very serious“, she remembers. This evening, she will have difficulty sleeping, hoping not to wake up with her feet in the water.
The inhabitants scan the sky and the level of the Yser with anxiety. In West Flanders conditions do not seem to be improving.
Laxmi Lota is on site, in Stavele, and observed today’s bad weather: “The rain has been incessant since we arrived this morning. We crossed small flooded roads to go from village to village. Residents are now confined to their homes. The sandbags are already installed in front of their door. Those we met told us that they were used to this kind of situation.“, she says at 7 p.m.
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