Floods Inundate Northern and Eastern France

Rain-swollen rivers burst their banks, flooding several villages, inundating town centers and blocking roads Wednesday in northern and eastern France.

The area around Paris was hit particularly hard as the Seine flooded towns and villages. Residents in many areas were forced to turn to boats for transportation.

River traffic was disrupted, roads along the Seine were closed, and the tip of the Ile de la Cite, the capital’s historic island center, was underwater. The Seine hit a peak level of 16 feet Monday.

In Normandy, some towns were submerged under 5 feet of water. Rescue services evacuated several dozen people, but no serious injuries were reported.

Eighteen villages around the southern city of Lyons were flooded as the Rhone burst its banks. In the town of Macon to the north, people walked gingerly along hastily constructed wooden boardwalks above swirling water.

Other affected regions included Calvados in the north, Meuse and Haute-Marne in the east and Saone-et-Loire in the center.

Michel Daloz, a meteorologist at the national weather service, Meteo France, said rain levels over the last few months were two to three times those of other years.

“November, December and January were very wet. . . . We had a very gentle winter with almost no freezing,” he was quoted Wednesday as saying in the newspaper Le Parisien.

The floods were the latest to hit France after an unusually mild and rainy winter that has left ground water reserves at maximum levels across the country.

“Everything is full, the soil is saturated,” said a spokesman for the Environment Ministry. “ ‘Alert’ thresholds have been hit in certain places.”

The wet weather is expected to last at least until early next week.

France has already suffered from severe flooding this winter, with the western area of Brittany among the worst-hit regions.