Flood, Snow, Ice and Pigeons in a Pandemic
Le Zouave
The Alma bridge in Paris is named after a French Crimean War victory. It hosts “ Le Zouave”, the sole survivor of the four original military statues which decorated the previous version of the bridge. They commemorated regiments which fought in the Crimea. Le Zouave sits on one of the bridge’s pillars, facing upstream.
Famously, as the unofficial measure of how dangerous is the level of flooding on the Seine, it has become the focus of, river-watching, concerned, Parisians. In the historic flood of 1910, the river reached to its shoulders, high above the normal level, given that the statue is itself 5 meters tall, not including its plinth. The highest I have personally seen the Zouave suffer, was with water up to his hips in 2016 and 2018 (See also my Blog post of June 11, 2016 at https://www.photeinos.com/blog/2016/6/zuave). This year it reached his shins, which still measures 4 meters above the normal level of the water. My non-statistical assessment, that the frequency of flooding is accelerating, is an uncomfortable thought, given that I myself live in the most vulnerable flood plain of the Seine.