Although it is still too early to be able to draw up an exhaustive assessment of the floods which have hit Pas-de-Calais over the past ten days, the scale of the disaster in certain economic sectors is emerging. The prefecture estimates the number of individual partial unemployment files filed by affected companies for their employees at 2,000. “All sectors are affected: businesses, industries, services, artisans, agriculture, with gradations in the impact”, observes Yann Orpin, president of the Greater Lille Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) and president of Medef Lille Métropole. Emmanuel Macron was due to travel to Pas-de-Calais on Tuesday, November 14, accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, and the Minister for SMEs, Olivia Grégoire.
Devastated premises, loss of stocks, destruction of computer equipment, electrical equipment, etc.: the damage has been recorded and an emergency number has been activated by the CCI and the regional council, in order to come to the aid of affected entrepreneurs. “Once the first shock has passed, you have to manage the emotion. There is also a whole methodology for insurance declarations, letters to be sent to obtain payment deadlines, to request partial unemployment. »
Yann Orpin is waiting for the end of the bad weather to have a truly precise vision of the consequences of the deluge of water which fell in Pas-de-Calais, in the sectors of Saint-Omer, Montreuil-sur-Mer and Boulogne-sur -Sea, but also in part of Béthunois. From now on, it is Flanders, in the North, which is taking on water.
Very affected stationery and cardboard factories
The paper mills of Pas-de-Calais are the main industries affected in the Aa valley, which flows into Audomarois. Needing nearby rivers, both to use the resource and to discharge their wastewater once treated, paper and cardboard mills suffer.
In Wizernes, BePaper had to cease its activity on Friday November 10 afternoon, especially as some of the 200 employees were faced with flooding at their homes. Throughout the weekend of Saturday November 11 and Sunday November 12, around sixty people took turns to properly stop the machines. At Sical, in Lumbres, production and logistics are affected, and the factory is at a standstill.
In 2020, this paper manufacturer commissioned a new wastewater treatment plant, equivalent to that of a town of 70,000 inhabitants. Impossible, obviously, to evacuate anything into the Aa, which is already overflowing. Here, the cardboard and stationery industry employs 350 people. In Blendecques, the NorPaper and RDM paper factories also had to close. In Arques, it was the packaging activity of glassmaker Arc International, located in the lower town, which found itself underwater.
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