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town in normal times AND activate the fl ood response plan when necessary (but
without wasting time checking whether it is necessary) said:
If there is an orange alert and it [XX] has not already called to say that there was going to
be an orange alert, because that's it…So, at that moment, I hear him on the TV, he hasn't
called me…Already, I am reassured because, if he hasn't called me, it means that the
orange alert, okay…For example, if it is in the Hérault, Gard, etc. Department, and maybe
it is not going to hit us directly, there's a thing, so he will…(…) XX phones me and when
he phones me that means that in fact there is a bit more pressure on it, or else I phone him
and say 'So, what's happening?'.
The municipality trusts XX to activate its 'fl ash fl ood' AE if necessary. It can
therefore be emancipated the rest of the time. Here we have the fi rst criterion of a
good emancipation vehicle, the ability also to be a vector of activation. This dialogue
between activation and emancipation is both a goal and a condition for the effi cacy
of the WP.
12.5.2
Emancipation Vehicles: Community and Time…
All the emancipation vehicles I observed, starting with the detour strategy, need to
be understood in their relation to community and time. Indeed, their effectiveness
on the ground, at time t, is the result of a process that is long-term and profoundly
embedded in community life.
The detour, for example, always relies on a foundation of trust between actors,
arising from shared practices and experiences. Based on long collective practice, it
allows the different WP actors to share the handling of relations with the entities.
The detour thus both originates in and underpins the community.
Moreover, the resources mobilised within these practices - expertise, acculturation,
communication, telecommunications, etc. - also share this dual timeframe: their
effectiveness and utility on D-Day depends on their acquisition/construction over
the long term.
Emancipation practices are therefore diffi cult to prescribe, because they arise from
collective work over time, and because they are deeply specifi c to the problems
faced and the territorial contexts concerned. They therefore lie partly outside the
traditional procedures of warning preparation, and it is diffi cult to manage their
development. So the issue is less 'how to organise and plan emancipation practices'
than to make sure that this collective process is not hindered, or 'how to foster these
practices, given that they cannot be prescribed'.
12.5.3
The Diffi culties of Emancipation Practices
Emancipation practices, we have seen, depend on a subtle balance between the
numerous factors described above. Without claiming to cover all these factors,
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