Storm Exposes Risks of Napoleonic Dams

By GABRIELE PARUSSINI

European Pressphoto Agency

PARIS—France started rethinking its rules governing coastline construction and dam building after the nation's fiercest storm in a decade killed at least 51 people.

President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday rushed to the stricken area and pledged €3 million of emergency aid. He also pledged to review the system of dams that failed to protect coastal inhabitants from the sea surge.

"It's a true tragedy," Mr. Sarkozy said in a press conference at l'Aiguillon-sur-Mer. "This shouldn't prevent us from analyzing the dams and the urban planning. We can't go on building everywhere." Mr. Sarkozy asked Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo to present a national dam plan before the summer.

Xynthia Rips Through Europe

Frederic Girou/European Pressphoto Agency

The president also charged a commission to report on the 100 kilometers of dams protecting the sandy coast, which date back to the Napoleonic era. The dam line was breached in several points, said Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Vailli spokesman for France's civil-protection agency.

Experts for some time have warned of the risks attached to the coastal dams.

"When something exceptional happens, dams simply aren't enough," Bruno Toison, an official from the agency that supervises the country's coast line, said on the phone. "We must decide to stop construction in risky zones" close to the dams. He said that the Languedoc-Roussillon region, the Mediterranean coast of Camargue, as well as the northern coast on the channel, close to Calais, remain at risk of inundation.

Mr. Toison said that dams would require more maintenance, but that politicians lack incentive to invest because catastrophe aren't frequent. He added that the dam management is split between local authorities, land owners and the state, making decisions more complicated.

Weather had improved markedly Monday. But experts warned that while the strong winds that hit the coast over the weekend had subsided, the damage caused by the storms had left the region vulnerable.

"The main risk is behind us, but there are still high tides which could push sea water inland, where it's already breached the dams," said Patrick Galois, a forecaster at Meteo France, the national weather service.

In the night between Saturday and Sunday, the combination of an exceptionally high tide pushing up the sea level by over a meter above normal and strong winds gusting to 160 kilometers an hour spawned waves as high as 8 meters, which overran dikes and flooded inland areas.

France is at the center of a violent storm sweeping across western Europe on Sunday. Video courtesy of Reuters.

The worst damages were recorded in Vendee, in west-central france- where the coastal towns of Aiguillon-sur-Mer and Faute-sur-Mer took the brunt of the tempest and tallied over half the casualties.

Firefighters and emergency workers were still on Monday trying to rescue people trapped in the storm-stricken regions.

By Monday night, about 10,000 people had been evacuated from their homes on the Atlantic coast and rescue teams staff were trying to find eight people still missing, Mr. Vailli said. Damages caused by the storm were vast.

In the coastal region, an estimated 220,000 homes remained without electricity after almost one million houses lost power due to the storm, ERDF, France's power grid manager, said in a statement. On Monday afternoon, about 172,000 households were still without electricity, and Prime Minister Francois Fillon said it may take "several days" to restore power to everyone.

The rest of the country suffered a virtual standstill for most of the weekend. Air France-KLM, France's Franco-Dutch national carrier, cancelled over 100 flights out of about 700 leaving or landing its main hub at Charles de Gaulle, north of Paris.

National railway operator SNCF faced multiple incidents due to trees falling on the rails. High speed trains on the whole network suffered long delays.

Finance Minister Christine Lagarde called on insurers to speed up the refunding procedures for individual and businesses hit by the storm. Allianz, Europe's largest insurer, extended the deadline for damage declaration and pledged more leniency in the evaluation of reimbursment demands.

The storm, dubbed Xynthia, claimed over 60 deaths in several European countries over the weekend, including Germany, Portugal, Belgium and Spain.

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