What happens to polar bears when the zoo floods? In the case of the 1910 flood of Paris, when the Seine rose more than 8 meters, they were left to fend for themselves. But don’t worry – they survived their stay in a more-watery-than-usual enclosure, as did all the other zoo animals except two antelopes and a giraffe (who died of pneumonia). The flood caused only one human death, despite making large areas of Paris look like Venice, and so the reaction of the majority of Parisians seems to have been “Flood holiday - wheeeee!” One letter on display in this exhibition, put on by the city government, says that a flooded Paris is such a marvelous sight that it’s a pity that God arranges for it only once every 100 years.
The signage is very much in French, but if you’re interested in the first urban natural disaster captured by the full panoply of modern news technology – film reels, amateur photographs, comic commemorative postcards – you can look at the pictures on their website or check out a new book by Jeffrey H. Jackson, Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910.
And yes – I have nothing critical or especially funny to say about an exhibition about an old flood. I just liked it, ok? Get off my back already.
