Rowing down the street: When the Seine river put Paris underwater

Rowing down la rue

When the swollen Seine river put Paris underwater

Amanda Uren

January 1910

Two men travel down the street in an improvised boat. Credit: ND/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Paris and its environs has regularly experienced flooding previous to 1910. But that year, after months of rainfall, the city experienced one of the most severe episodes of flooding in its history.On Jan. 21, the Seine began to rise more rapidly than usual. Parisians evacuated at-risk locations. Then, on the outskirts, the river burst its banks. In the centre of the city, workmen hurriedly built embankments to stop the Seine flooding the city's quays — the water only rose up through tunnels, drains and sewers.A week later, the Seine reached its peak at six metres above its normal level, flooding 12 of Paris's 20 arrondissements (districts). Roughly 20,000 buildings were devastated and 200,000 people made homeless. Emergency services, police and charities, alongside the citizens of Paris, pulled together and organised ferry services and built wooden walkways to keep the city operating.The floods were a spectacle for those not directly involved. Some entrepreneurs brought cameras and produced souvenir postcards. Artists set up easels and painted the scenes. Other enterprising individuals hosted boat tours of the devastation.Only one death was officially recorded, and there was no major outbreak of disease, possibly because city officials moved quickly to remove debris and disinfect the streets after the floods. Donations from the rest of France and other countries helped fund recovery operations.
Some historians have come to see the flood as a "dress rehearsal" in solidarity that Parisians would require four years later with the outbreak of World War I.

A polar bear in the flooded bear enclosure in the Botanical Gardens. Credit: Branger/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Rowing down the street in Poitiers (VIIth arrondissement). Credit: Branger/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Crowds had gathered on the embankments, admiring the headlong rush of the silent yellow river that carried with it logs and barrels, broken furniture, the carcasses of animals, and perhaps sometimes a corpse, all racing madly to the sea. - Eye witness to the Paris floods of 1910

People skirt the edge of the street on improvised pathways. Credit: LL/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

On Avenue Montaigne people organised pleasure tours by boat. For two sous, you pass by the smartest hotels and photographers will take your picture as a flood victim for the sum of 50 centimes. - Guillaume Apollinaire