From his office, Yves Deshayes observes the meadow facing his town hall: “There was 80 cm of water yesterday.
We no longer saw much grass,” confessed the councilor of Pont-l’Évêque this Tuesday, February 27, the day after the floods which affected several sectors of his city.
“Near the Yvie, people had their feet in the water to get out of their cars,” says François, a passerby.
With the Touques and the Calonne, it is one of the three rivers which irrigate this commune in the Pays d'Auge, with its feet in the water for the third time in... three months.
“I measured the rainfall at home and 37 mm of water fell in 24 hours, from Sunday to Monday morning.
It's starting to happen.
It went up quickly during the night,” says the mayor.
A phenomenon requiring the activation of the municipal safeguard plan, with siren, rotations of municipal agents and great vigilance throughout the day on Monday.
More fear than harm, however: no evacuation and very little damage.
“We’re lucky that it’s not like in the North,” sighs Bernadette, who has been here for two years, looking towards the famous field swallowed up by the flood.
Raised houses near the Calonne
Local residents say they are used to it and "not more worried than that" at the mention of the recurring risk hovering over this city located "at the bottom of a valley, which can receive significant volumes of water, particularly on the Calonne », Describes Yves Deshayes.
This river has “semi-torrential” characteristics, because it descends from the plateaus,” adds the general director of services David Marivingt.
It then greatly gains in flow and, above 20 m3/second, hits the deck of a bridge in the town and overflows.
Also read: For the Touques valley, between Pont-L'évêque and Deauville, the rising water level is already tomorrow
1980, 1988, 2018… So many years of notable floods which caused damage and frightened residents.
“There is a culture of flood risk here,” breathes the director of services.
Awareness visible in the elevated architecture of the houses on rue de la Chaussée Nival, neighboring Calonne.
In 2002, Pont-l'Évêque erected barriers along the said river, restored at the end of 2023. “We close an escape hatch when the water reaches 1.80 m,” explains David Marivingt.
This Monday, it rose to 2.23 m.
These arrangements made it possible to prevent the equivalent of 40 cm of water from flowing towards the city center.
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A delayed retention basin project
The fact remains that, as our passer-by François concludes, with a certain sense of the phrase: “people can tighten their buttocks when the water rises”.
Because Pont-l'Évêque cannot get rid of the problem.
And not really, either, to protect yourself from it, squeaks the mayor: “A retention basin project, via a dike upstream of the city, was canceled in the early 2000s because of the law on ecological continuity .
The maintenance of the valley and marshes leaves something to be desired.
The flow is not happening well enough.
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According to the municipality's findings, the basin would have been large enough to avoid the inconvenience of the main floods of recent decades.
Pont-l'Évêque now knows the curves of Vigicrues by heart.
A good part ends up in the fields, but a worrying suspense grips the town when water enters the streets, before the start of a recession.