How much did flood victims get?

Nothing...

Along the banks between which the Seine and the Marne now flow in calmer waters, local residents heal the wounds that the flood inflicted on their homes.

In Joinville, a man, in shirt sleeves, armed with a large brush and a small pot of blue, repainted a barrier:

 - So shall we repair?

 - Not as good as we would like. How ? Didn't the State come to your aid?

 - Do you want to talk about the 15 million voted by the Chambers? We haven't received a penny yet.

Because the credit voted by the Chambers is undoubtedly still waiting for the distribution commissions to have finished their work. Then it is not entirely for the Paris region. And then, when it is distributed, when all the official or occult influences have acted, how much will the real victims receive?

For the moment, they have only obtained bags of lime for disinfection and even then not in sufficient quantity. Because, as always, the official forecasts were well below needs.

And today the Seine Department is asking the municipalities for the price of bags of lime...

Why doesn't the state lend money to disaster victims?

The victims do not ask for alms, tells us Mr. Girod, vice-president of the Federation of Flooded People. Let the State lend them. just a little money. In 1910, the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations was authorized to make advances to disaster victims repayable in monthly installments to the tax collector and guaranteed by the land they owned. Why don't we do the same this year?

This is the question that all local residents are asking themselves.

 - I had a player piano, the owner of a small café on the banks of the Marne told me. I had hoisted it on tables to protect it from the water which had invaded my room. A table collapsed. My piano fell into the water. It was taken back from me for 500 francs and I was forced to buy another one for 3,500 francs.

- To cover these expenses, I have to borrow, because everything has to be restored before Easter, the date when the “season” begins on the banks of the Marne.

Borrow, but how? how ? since the State refuses to do so. It was then that a gang of traffickers and pawnbrokers descended on the banks of the Seine and the Marne.

- I needed 10,000 francs to restore my establishment, another resident told me. They came to offer them to me. Only I was asked for 9% interest, 5% for moving funds, 5% for an intermediate fee and 500 francs for the person who put me in touch with this generous lender.

Similar markets are happening throughout the disaster region. We see land and villas bought at a low price by passing buyers from discouraged or ruined owners.

Does the State, by refusing the loan to the victims, by delaying the distribution of aid, want to give time to traffickers of all kinds to carry out their sad work and does it consent, after not having been able to preserve the water the residents of the Seine and the Marne, to hand them over to usurers?