39 people died in the mid-July floods, including several in Verviers where no evacuation order was given.
Today, many victims are still waiting for answers: why was no evacuation ordered? Why does it take more than 4 months for some experts to pass by? Why is everything so slow, so exhausting?
Between anger and discouragement in these ravaged neighbourhoods, which are Préjavais, Raines Sècheval, Hodimont and Ensival, some have organised themselves into neighbourhood committees.
**Maria: “We live in expectation”**
Maria Alonso had bought her small, cosy house three weeks before the floods. Now she lives upstairs with a space heater. In her kitchen, it’s 4 degrees, the screed threatens to collapse if it weren’t for the shoring placed throughout her vaulted cellars. That day, Resa finally came by and his heating engineer was busy replacing everything from the radiators to the meter and the pipes, everything had leaked. Maria will have her heating back in a few days, but she is far from smiling again.
“There are only two of us, we don’t need to cook much, a microwave, a small heater with a tank is enough, but there are families with children who are always cold and nothing moves. We, like many of our neighbours, are fully insured and yet nothing is getting better, prices are soaring, estimates are going up and insurance companies are quibbling. An example? The staircase: they intervene for the first few steps, not for the whole staircase! In some houses, the experts haven’t even been inside, it’s inhuman. We live in a state of waiting and the most difficult thing is that we don’t know how much longer we’ll have to wait. At Karim’s house (another resident), the counter-expert will only come in January!
Given the accumulation of problems for everyone, what was a street committee has become a neighbourhood committee: “We did this to support each other, because if it’s not one or the other who’s struggling to find a heater, to get information… We don’t expect anything from anyone anymore.
In Ensival, the residents are also waiting, running out of steam with the administrative procedures: “How many of us are moping around in front of the expertise? Spending sleepless nights and hoping to recover our lives that were shattered in a few hours? But what are these people who give themselves the right to prevent us from bouncing back? This restaurant owner has seen his entire building ravaged by the floods and is still fighting with the insurance company.
**Bernard: “Evacuating was the right thing to do. I call it total abandonment.”**
That night, Maria was woken up by her dogs. She looked out the window, the Rue des Raines had turned into a river.
“The old lady across the street who lived on the ground floor, no one could do anything to save her, the water pressure, and you could hear her screaming… Yet, already in the afternoon, the water coming from the Mangombroux stream had blown up the windows, the cellars were flooded, the street up to the pavements too, but they didn’t say anything to us so we didn’t leave. What we saw here at night was a wave. When I hear some people at the parliamentary enquiry, I think we don’t live in the same city!”
Bernard has lived in Rue Renier for years, a bucolic spot on the corner of the Vesdre where he loved to watch the wildlife, the birds. All this was destroyed by the disaster.
“I work at night, so I sleep in the morning, but by 10 o’clock it was already impossible with the noise of the Vesdre and all that it was already carrying. I sealed the windows on the mezzanine floor where I have a room, but I realised that it was no use. In the afternoon the water had already reached the top of the bridge arches. Two people were sent to block the bridge. I don’t understand why they didn’t evacuate, it was common sense. It’s a total abandonment.
It was thanks to Michael, a young aspiring fireman, that Bernard’s life was saved: “He was there for the bridge, he stayed longer than we asked him to, and at about 3.30 in the night, he banged on the door to tell me to evacuate. A few minutes later, it would no longer have been possible. Still very marked by the night he experienced, Bernard knows that he will never return to the neighbourhood he loved.
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39 people died in the mid-July floods, including several in Verviers where no evacuation order was given.
Today, many victims are still waiting for answers: why was no evacuation ordered? Why does it take more than 4 months for some experts to pass by? Why is everything so slow, so exhausting?
Between anger and discouragement in these ravaged neighbourhoods, which are Préjavais, Raines Sècheval, Hodimont and Ensival, some have organised themselves into neighbourhood committees.
**Maria: “We live in expectation”**
Maria Alonso had bought her small, cosy house three weeks before the floods. Now she lives upstairs with a space heater. In her kitchen, it’s 4 degrees, the screed threatens to collapse if it weren’t for the shoring placed throughout her vaulted cellars. That day, Resa finally came by and his heating engineer was busy replacing everything from the radiators to the meter and the pipes, everything had leaked. Maria will have her heating back in a few days, but she is far from smiling again.
“There are only two of us, we don’t need to cook much, a microwave, a small heater with a tank is enough, but there are families with children who are always cold and nothing moves. We, like many of our neighbours, are fully insured and yet nothing is getting better, prices are soaring, estimates are going up and insurance companies are quibbling. An example? The staircase: they intervene for the first few steps, not for the whole staircase! In some houses, the experts haven’t even been inside, it’s inhuman. We live in a state of waiting and the most difficult thing is that we don’t know how much longer we’ll have to wait. At Karim’s house (another resident), the counter-expert will only come in January!
Given the accumulation of problems for everyone, what was a street committee has become a neighbourhood committee: “We did this to support each other, because if it’s not one or the other who’s struggling to find a heater, to get information… We don’t expect anything from anyone anymore.
In Ensival, the residents are also waiting, running out of steam with the administrative procedures: “How many of us are moping around in front of the expertise? Spending sleepless nights and hoping to recover our lives that were shattered in a few hours? But what are these people who give themselves the right to prevent us from bouncing back? This restaurant owner has seen his entire building ravaged by the floods and is still fighting with the insurance company.
**Bernard: “Evacuating was the right thing to do. I call it total abandonment.”**
That night, Maria was woken up by her dogs. She looked out the window, the Rue des Raines had turned into a river.
“The old lady across the street who lived on the ground floor, no one could do anything to save her, the water pressure, and you could hear her screaming… Yet, already in the afternoon, the water coming from the Mangombroux stream had blown up the windows, the cellars were flooded, the street up to the pavements too, but they didn’t say anything to us so we didn’t leave. What we saw here at night was a wave. When I hear some people at the parliamentary enquiry, I think we don’t live in the same city!”
Bernard has lived in Rue Renier for years, a bucolic spot on the corner of the Vesdre where he loved to watch the wildlife, the birds. All this was destroyed by the disaster.
“I work at night, so I sleep in the morning, but by 10 o’clock it was already impossible with the noise of the Vesdre and all that it was already carrying. I sealed the windows on the mezzanine floor where I have a room, but I realised that it was no use. In the afternoon the water had already reached the top of the bridge arches. Two people were sent to block the bridge. I don’t understand why they didn’t evacuate, it was common sense. It’s a total abandonment.
It was thanks to Michael, a young aspiring fireman, that Bernard’s life was saved: “He was there for the bridge, he stayed longer than we asked him to, and at about 3.30 in the night, he banged on the door to tell me to evacuate. A few minutes later, it would no longer have been possible. Still very marked by the night he experienced, Bernard knows that he will never return to the neighbourhood he loved.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
They feel abandoned because they are abandoned…
Who would’ve expected that. The media is giving all the attention to it for two weeks and then…bam
…nothing. Hypocrites.
Ah the government… always there when they need your vote, never there when you need them.
I worked briefly in an insurance company (one of the big ones on the Belgian market) and they are really lagging behind on the flood reimbursements.
I was a temp there and my only job was to make payments to the flood victims. A month an a half before they laid me off with another temp.
They are sooooo fucked because that backlog only seems to grow every day instead of shrinking.