LETTER FROM PARIS: Between now and April 7th, a fleet of unmarked lorries will complete 1,200 journeys between central Paris and a secret, one-hectare warehouse in a suburb north of the city. With military precision, they are evacuating 100,000 carefully wrapped objects. If disaster occurs, hundreds of firemen, security guards and technicians will be mobilised to complete emergency operations.
The danger that pre-occupies the French capital is not Saddam Hussein or al-Qaeda - though that anxiety is also present. The unmarked lorries are transporting art treasures, not government records.
"A catastrophic flooding of the Seine remains the main natural threat for Paris and the entire Île-de-France region," says Mr Jean-Paul Proust, the Prefect of Police.
A waist-high line on the limestone doorway at number 18 rue de Bellechasse, two and a half blocks from the river, is marked in black-painted letters, "level of the Seine, January 28th, 1910". The Musée d'Orsay, home to many of the world's finest impressionist masterpieces, is located between the ominous reminder and the threatening waters.
During dry decades, Paris forgot the propensity of its waterway to overflow at least once a century. Over the past two years, severe floods in Picardy, Dresden, Prague and the Gard region of southern France revived the memory. This winter, an exhibition on the 1910 flood - complete with photographs of boats in front of the Gare St Lazare - attracted twice the usual number of visitors to the Conciergerie. Newspapers published maps of the capital with vast lakes reaching inland from the river banks, and residents of threatened areas are emptying their cellars. Modern Paris is ill-prepared for the age-old danger.
Construction companies have poured countless tonnes of concrete into building foundations, leaving no outlet for the saturated water table. "The four reservoirs upstream from Paris can hold only 800 million cubic metres of water, of the 4 billion that are in danger of flooding Paris and its region," Mr Jean-Louis Rizzoli, the engineer in charge of waterworks told Le Monde.
Unusually heavy rain could provoke a flood comparable to the 1910 disaster, with potential damage estimated at a minimum of €10 billion.
The transport company that operates the Paris metro foresaw the danger as early as 1996 and prepared tens of thousands of sand-bags, pine beams and pre-fabricated walls to protect its 400 tunnels. Yet it took a stern warning from the police to frighten other institutions. Administrators at the Georges-Pompidou Hospital, overlooking the river in the 15th arrondissement, realised they'd have to evacuate 1,300 seriously ill patients. The electricity company EDF predicts power cuts in 350,000 Paris homes and 18,500 offices.
On February 13th, Mr Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the Minister of Culture, unveiled his €5.2 million rescue plan for 15 Paris monuments threatened by flooding. This is the first operation of its kind since art treasures were rushed south before invading Germans in 1940. "We are told there is a real danger of flooding, comparable to what happened in 1910," Mr Aillagon said, standing in the centre of the Musée d'Orsay.
Both the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, which look onto the river, built the underground storage rooms they are now evacuating after 1910. The 100,000 paintings, sculptures, costumes and objets d'arts include Picassos and Matisses under restoration.
In the event the 72-hour emergency plan is activated, other works would be moved upstairs. Large stone and bronze sculptures in the central foyer of Orsay, now called "the bathtub", are to be water-proofed with plastic sheeting and left in place. The Louvre's Middle Eastern antiquities department is relocating some 30,000 clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, and papyrus scrolls studied by Egyptologists.
The authorities have signed a two-year renewable lease for the secret warehouse near Saint-Denis, but the rescue operation is forcing museums to consider loaning or selling the works they've hoarded but don't have space to exhibit.
Ms Marie-Claude Lelieur, the director of the Forney Library in the Hôtel de Sens, a lovely 15th-century building next to the Seine in the Marais, calls the flood plan "a death sentence".
Her library is in the process of moving most of its 150,000 volumes on fine and decorative arts to higher ground in the 19th arrondissement. "It will take at least two days to order books for our readers," Ms Lelieur said. "For a flood that may never happen; that's the result of a zero-risk policy."