From the many catastrophic floods of the past, only remains dint recollection deeply buried in the memories of old riverside residents, some marks on buildings and more or less important and accurate information, according to the time of occurrence of the flood, All this information in France is quite often scattered among different places and offices and it is not necessarily always archived. It is therefore difficult to retrieve and use it. This information is also much too often neglected. A years ago studies were undertaken so as to enhance these qualitative and quantitative data, providing information on extreme phenomena which didn't occur in a recent past but which could happen again. The first information collected from these studies is the knowledge that the area acted by the hydro-climatological phenomena which generate catastrophic floods is very large. For example, in October 1872 one of the biggest flood on the Loire river occurred at the same time as such similar tremendous floods in Spain and in Italy as well.Zsum711.
