Paris museum reopens as French floods slowly ease

The death toll from French flooding rose to four, with 24 others injured, said French prime minister Manuel Valls after a government crisis centre meeting.

Authorities have shut the Louvre museum, the national library, the Orsay museum and the Grand Palais, Paris’ striking glass-and-steel topped exhibition center. Officials erected emergency flood barriers along the Seine in the capital, where several metro stations were closed and workers piled sandbags on platform entrances to stop the waters.

The Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay are both home to world-renowned art collections, the former including the celebrated Mona Lisa painting and Venus de Milo statue.

The famed Louvre in Paris has been temporarily shut down as employees on Friday rushed to relocate thousands of pieces of art from the museum’s basement vaults after a week of rain caused flooding across Europe. The French energy company Enedis said over 17,000 homes were still without electricity Saturday in the Paris region and central France.

Parts of Germany, where 10 people have been killed in the floods in recent days, are also expected to experience downpours, meaning rivers and tributaries there will be cresting over coming days as water works its way down the river systems, the ministry said.

In normal times, the river level is between 1 metre and 2 metres (3 feet, 3 inches to 6 1/2 feet) on the Austerlitz scale, he said, a system used out of historical habit so one flood could be compared to another. The river was expected to crest in the evening about 21 feet, and to remain at high levels throughout the weekend, the French Environment Ministry said in a statement. The record remains the 8.62 metres reached in 1910. Both the Louvre and Orsay museums were closed as officials said the Seine had been at its highest level in almost 35 years.

“I’m enjoying looking at the level of Seine river…it is an event to witness”.

(AP Photo/Francois Mori). Road signs emerge on the banks of the Seine river next to the Bir Hakeim bridge during floods in Paris, Saturday, June 4, 2016.

Photo taken on June 4, 2016 shows the rising water level of the Seine River near the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

But while crowds thronged to photograph the river – Paris’s star attraction this weekend – residents in nearby towns picked through their devastated homes, with insurers estimating damages of at least €600 million ($681 million).

“We’re now in the stabilisation phase, even if we could still get one or two centimetres more”, said Bruno Janet, head of modelling at Vigicrues.

According to reports by BBC, at least 11 people have died in the past week as a result of the flooding in Europe.

Nicole Morel, who lives on the ninth floor of an apartment building on the banks of the Seine, said the first floor of her building was evacuated after taking on water.