“The water is already at 7 meters and will rise all day. We are at the peak of the flood.” In the crisis room of Paris town hall, not far from the Seine, Ziad Touat, from the consulting company Crisotech, puts the audience in the know. Here it is projected for March 13, 2026. It continues with a fictional television news show, based on this scenario. “Nearly 300,000 people have already been evacuated,” warns the presenter.
Around thirty representatives of city services then outline the measures already taken to deal with this monster flood, and a dizzying list of problems to be expected: blocked roads, stopped waste collection, power cuts, closed schools, hospitals being evacuated, risks of food shortages, sanitation network soon to be overwhelmed… Paris is not at the end of its troubles. “The decline can take several weeks, but also a few months,” warns Pénélope Komitès, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of resilience and leader of the flooded Paris exercise.
A few dozen meters away, under tents, Red Cross and civil protection personnel are preparing for the arrival of the first evacuees. A little further on, footbridges allow you to circulate in streets covered with a meter of water.
Nearly 80 Parisians were mobilized this Monday, October 13, for a new full-scale crisis exercise in the streets of Paris, two years after the one simulating
