Anyone who knows the symbol of Paris (a ship against a red and blue background) knows that the city’s motto is “Fluctuat Nec Mergitur,” or in English, “She is rocked by the waves but does not sink.” And indeed, since the Middle Ages, Paris has carried on a love affair laced with fear with its river, the Seine. In the past, the river was the source of the city’s wealth, which is why the symbol of Paris is actually the emblem of the water merchants’ guild, who used the Seine to move goods from Paris across France and from France into the City of Light. Today the Seine is one of the elements that makes Paris such a magical and romantic place, as any couple who has ever kissed on one of its bridges at night, with the Eiffel Tower sparkling in the background and the Pont Neuf lit up in style, can tell you. On the other hand, throughout that same history, the Seine has also been responsible more than once for floods and disasters that struck the city.
1910: The Great Flood of Paris
Over the centuries the Seine has periodically overflowed its banks, which is why many of the city’s historic bridges no longer exist today (most of them were simply washed away). The most famous flood in Paris’s history struck in January 1910, when the river rose to a peak level of 8.62 meters. As a result, the riverbanks and the city center flooded, and Paris became a kind of Venice for 35 days. That flood hit not just the arrondissements along the river (the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th) but also more inland districts like the 8th and 9th, with water reaching almost all the way to the Gare Saint-Lazare train station.
As a result, the sewers overflowed and flooded the métro and the basements of buildings, which turned into makeshift swimming pools. Even the Eiffel Tower shifted about 2 centimeters off its axis, but Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), with remarkable French efficiency, had built the tower on hydraulic jacks, and so he was able to straighten it out easily and avoid turning it into a French version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Parisians of the day adapted fairly quickly to the fact that the Seine had forced Paris into a sort of twin-city arrangement with Venice, and organized accordingly. Boats popped up everywhere and became a legitimate means of transportation. Meanwhile, makeshift shelters were set up inside churches and schools to house residents who had lost their homes to the flood. But even French efficiency has its limits, and at times decisions were made during the flood that any overly bureaucratic system elsewhere could be proud of. Without a doubt, the silliest decision was to haul the garbage that had piled up in homes and streets to the Pont Tolbiac and dump it into the Seine from there. Why was that foolish, you ask? Because of the direction of the river’s current, which sent the garbage straight back into the streets of Paris, exactly where it had just been collected, after hours of work by battalions of laborers…
By late January and early February, as the waters began to recede, it became clear that the flood had caused about 400 million francs in damage. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, since the river rose slowly enough to allow for an orderly evacuation of residents. Maybe that is why the event is remembered as something of a comic episode in the history of France, one that produced endless jokes, some of them made up on the spot during the flood itself. One of the funniest images (at least to me) is a photo of a café closed because of the flood. The café’s name, in case you were wondering, was “The Aquarium”…
The Zouave Statue: Paris’s Official Water Gauge
Even though more than a hundred years have passed since the great flood of 1910, the way Parisians measure the Seine’s water level hasn’t changed. They still look to the statue of the Zouave (a French soldier from the colonial army in North Africa) standing on the Pont de l’Alma. The Zouave statue was once part of a series of soldier statues created to decorate the original Pont de l’Alma. The bridge is named after one of the battles of the Crimean War, one the French managed not to lose, and the soldier statues marked the units that took part in that battle. In the 1970s the bridge was rebuilt and the soldier statues were moved to various locations around France. The Zouave was the only one left on the bridge…
On an ordinary day, the soldier stands on his pedestal over the river, facing the direction of the current. If his toes are underwater, Parisians already start checking gondola prices on Amazon. In 1910 the statue was submerged up to its elbows, and it looked like it was about to enlist in the French army’s frogman unit (quite literally).
Paris Flooded: Then and Now
Parisians know that a flood like the one in 1910 can happen about once a century (which is why everyone was convinced Paris would flood again in 2010, and the city did indeed flood… with exhibitions about the 1910 flood). To better prepare for a possible flood (as is happening these days), a plan called “Neptune” has been drawn up, involving about 10,000 city workers and soldiers. Of course, the most important thing is that the radio shows must never stop. Paris, after all, could never survive if the background noise during the efforts to save the city didn’t include debates on the philosophical meaning of the deluge, or politicians blaming each other, in a French version of the kind of heated political radio debate familiar to any listener… That’s why a 330-meter barrier has been built to protect the French public radio headquarters, which sits right on the riverbank, from flooding. Special faucets have also been installed in the building’s restrooms to keep the French radio’s own sewage from overflowing (a nice trick, let’s try that one on our own local stations too).
Naturally, the Louvre is also busy preparing and has already partially closed to visitors. Don’t worry about the artworks: an army of volunteers is standing ready to move them from the basements to higher floors, and I’m pretty sure the heavy statues were already relocated the moment rumors of flooding started (and here’s yet another reason why you might want to skip your visit to the Louvre, again). And if you thought Paris only looks out for its culture, you’ll be glad to know it’s also looking out for its homeless population, clearing them from the banks of the Seine (so that, heaven forbid, their bodies don’t float into the Louvre through its windows. After all, the Louvre isn’t a museum of modern art, and the bodies of vagrants wouldn’t exactly be welcomed there as art installations).
So, dear Francophiles, there’s nothing to worry about. Paris will survive this flood too, and soon it will be flooded again, this time by something worse than Parisian sewage. It will be flooded by soccer fans…
This article was written on June 3, 2016.
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