‘There’s not much we can do,’ says Mathieu Barras, who owns a plot of land in northern France, where heavy flooding forced dozens of schools to close and rendered some roads only accessible by boat. The flooding came as heavy rainfall caused the nearby Slack river to overflow, submerging dozens of towns in the northern Pas-de-Calais region. A week earlier, more than a dozen people died across western Europe after Storm Ciaran brought heavy downpours and record winds.
Residents lament ‘a lot of damage’ in flood-hit northern France
