In photos: Overflowing Seine river forces roads and stations to close in Paris
The water level rose around four meters above normal for this time of the year.
The Seine river in Paris reached its peak on Monday, rising around four meters above its normal water level for this time of the year. Weeks of incessant rainfall led to the flooding in the French Capital.
The floodwaters rose to 5.84 meters on Monday and is not expected to start receding before Tuesday, according to the BBC. Around 1,500 people were evacuated from their houses near the Seine in Paris and around a thousand are without electricity. The homeless have been moved to gyms set up as temporary shelters.
Paris uses the statue of a soldier from the Crimean War – known as The Zouave – on the Pont de l’Alma as a marker for water levels in the city. The water is still well below his waist – in the last floods in 2016, it was around his hips, while it had reached his neck in the worst floods in Paris in 1910 when the city was under water for two months.
Seven stations of a main railway network in Paris will be closed till February 5 as the floodwaters recede. Roads near the Seine are also out of service, as are the city’s Bateaux Mouches tourist boats.
Several neighbourhoods in the Parisian suburbs are also under water. Places downstream of the Seine are on high alert for flooding.