A year after the Lubrizol fire, fear has not left the Rouen people

The Lubrizol site in Rouen, classified -

• Although it was neither dead nor injured, the gigantic fire which struck the industrial sites of Lubrizol and Normandie Logistique on September 26, 2019 marked the spirits in Rouen.

• And the end of the cleaning work in recent days does not change anything.

  The Unitary Collective Lubrizol invites to a big demonstration, Saturday, to mark this first anniversary.

  “A year later, we don't forget”, say the leaflets.

• In the collimator of the collective: the shortcomings in the health monitoring of this fire, during which 9,500 tons of chemicals burned.

A piece of wall still blackened by soot.

You have to squint to see it from rue Stalingrad, in Petit-Quevilly, where Robin Letellier, freelance photographer and member of the Association des sinistrés de Lubrizol (ASL), leads us.

The best point of view if we want to observe the possible traces of the gigantic fire which struck, on September 26, 2019, the Lubrizol site, specializing in engine lubricants and classified as "high threshold seveso" for the dangerousness of the products it uses , and its neighbor Normandie Logistique (NL), where Lubrizol stored some of its products.

“This summer again, the last time I came, we still saw charred debris on the ground,” says Robin Letellier.

But, last Wednesday, there was almost nothing to suggest that here, around 2:40 am and for twelve hours, more than 9,500 tons of chemicals burned, but also fiber cement roofs containing asbestos.

The thick plume of black smoke 22 km long and 6 km wide will fly over Rouen, but also hundreds of municipalities in Seine-Maritime, Hauts-de-France and as far as Belgium.

"How do you want me to forget?"

"

At the same time, the Seine-Maritime prefecture had set the first anniversary of the disaster as the deadline for completing the cleaning work.

The deadline has been met.

"NL finished the work on August 18, Lubrizol on September 3," says Charlotte Goujon, mayor of Petit-Quevilly.

Gérald Le Corre smiles.

“Everyone has their own goals,” remarks the health and work manager at the CGT Seine-Maritime and coordinator of the Lubrizol Unitary Collective.

That of the collective and the ASL will bring together a maximum of people on Saturday, at 1:30 p.m., quai de France, in front of the entrance to Lubrizol, the starting point of a major event.

With a slogan: “One year later, we don't forget!

Say the leaflets.

"How do you expect me to forget?" Protests Christian, whose house in Petit-Quevilly is only a few hundred meters from Lubrizol.

I saw cans thrown into the air around 3 a.m.

"Like many of my neighbors, I had to flee by car in the middle of the night to take refuge with my daughter", continues Monique, 83, met a street further on.

Campaigners for the truth about the Lubrizol fire make a collage action - Robin Letellier / SIPA

Stubborn odors for up to a few days

We could still challenge many passers-by in Petit-Quevilly, as elsewhere in Greater Rouen.

"They will all have something to tell you about this September 26," says Simon de Carvalho, spokesperson for the ASL.

It evokes itchy eyes, headaches, diarrhea for some, vomiting for others.

Robin Letellier adds “the soot and asbestos debris found on the roofs of houses, in gardens and on agricultural land in the country of Bray [north-east of Rouen].

"And then there is the panic too, tackled by Guillaume Blavette, administrator of France nature environnement (FNE) Normandy," well fed by the flaws in the warning and information of populations.

There were no fire alarms during the night, some schools were ordered to close, others no, no one could tell us exactly what was burning… ”

Even today, the anguish struggles to dissipate.

If not because the fire in Lubrizol has been regularly remembered in the memory of the people of Rouen over the past twelve months.

"The smells", they all slip.

“Those related to cleaning operations,” specifies Guillaume Blavette.

It started in the spring, in other words in full confinement.

For many, it was the double penalty.

"

"Not the same as AZF"

Contacted by

, Pierre-André Durand, Prefect of Seine-Maritime, does not deny the inadmissibility of this fire and says he understands the trauma and the anger of part of the Rouen inhabitants.

"But the emotion should not obscure the reality of what this fire was," he said.

Some have made the comparison, wrongly, with the explosion of the AZF factory in Toulouse *, which left 31 dead, 3,000 injured and 15,000 apartments destroyed.

Lubrizol, it's zero every time.

"

The prefect also recalls that "in the fifteen days which followed September 26, in the 111 municipalities of Seine-Maritime affected by the clouds, the emergency services received only 257 people for inconvenience linked to the fire. , all exits quickly ”, and that“ the psychological unit set up was also closed after two weeks, at the request of the doctors, after having welcomed 47 people ”.

The health analyzes published online by the prefecture also invite more serenity.

This is the case with the Interpretation of the Study of Environments (IEM), which aimed to measure any traces of the Fire in the soil and on the plants of the affected communes of the department.

Result?

“The analyzes comply with the thresholds and, when there are no thresholds, with the background noise,” she concludes.

The study certainly revealed traces of pollution, in particular lead and mercury, but which are linked to the industrial heritage of the Rouen region.

"Gaps in the health monitoring of the disaster"

"A joke", qualify Simon de Carvahlo and Robin Letellier, who tick in particular on the fact that Lubrizol and NL, forced by the State to finance this IEM, were able to mandate the laboratory of their choice.

“Not great for transparency, they say.

And it seems to us that the study did not look very much at the research in the environment of certain substances, such as BTEX - aromatic chemical compounds -, however present in the stocks of products which have burned.

"

In short, the ASL will launch its second opinion and seek funds as such.

The problem, "is that we do not even know very well the effects of these substances on a living organism when they burn, underlines Gullaume Blavette.

“And even less when these substances - benzene, lead, PAHs **, dioxins, asbestos - burn at the same time, adds the union official, who is worried about a probable“ cocktail effect ”.

This is one of the reasons why the Unitary Collective Lubrizol calls for demonstrations on Saturday.

“There are shortcomings in the monitoring, by the State services, of the environmental and health consequences of the fire, repeats Gerald Le Corre.

The Senate commission of inquiry itself points to this in its report.

"

"Other studies to come", says the prefect

Pierre-André Durand says the work is still in progress.

On September 1, Public Health France thus launched a health survey which plans to question 5,200 people, drawn by lot, on their perception of the fire and the impact on their health.

“At the same time, a quantitative study of health risks (EQRS) was launched, in order to determine whether there is an excess of health risks attributable to the releases from the fire,” he explains.

In both cases, the results are expected in the first quarter of 2021. The Unitary Collective Lubrizol and ASL will not be satisfied.

"We are asking for medical monitoring over time for populations that have been exposed to the cloud," insists Guillaume Blavette.

This implies forming a cohort of individuals affected by the disaster, another witness, and taking blood samples regularly from these two populations.

"

Lubrizol, just the submerged facade of the problem?

This doubt about health monitoring illustrates the broken trust between part of the Rouen population on the one hand, and the State and industrialists on the other.

But this is only one facet of what is wrong with reading the tract of the Unitary Collective Lubrizol, which also criticizes the way we manage industrial risk in France and how we inform the population.

These issues have a particular resonance in Greater Rouen.

"Lubrizol is only the beginning of a long corridor of factories, for many in chemicals, which stretches over ten kilometers long and one wide to Grand-Courronne", describes Robin Letellier by telling us visit the places.

In the lot, a slew of high threshold and low threshold seveso sites (listed by the platform Our house burns).

Screenshot / Google Maps - Screenshot / Google Maps

"Already in January 2013, the mercaptant leak - a foul-smelling and toxic gas at certain concentrations - which had affected the Paris region, had started from an industry in Rouen", recalls Gérald Le Corre, who also lists the industrial incidents that have occurred. in Greater Rouen since September 26, 2019: “the explosion of a new bin in Lubrizol in January, a fire at Smedar (the waste treatment center in Rouen) in June - the second in two years -, the explosion at Saipol in Grand-Couronnes, an electrical incident in Borealis… ”

Impossible good neighborliness?

What push the inhabitants of Greater Rouen to migrate to other skies?

In Petit-Quevilly, Charlotte Goujon knows that at least ten families have left the town since September 26 because of this proximity to sensitive industrial sites.

She also quotes the scathing comments, on Facebook, at the bottom of a message from a real estate developer advertising on social networks for a building being acquired in the town.

"Like 'you are crazy to buy over there,' she explains.

The image of the city took a hit.

"

Jean-Michel Beregovoy, EELV deputy to the mayor of Rouen, invites us to take the problem in the other direction.

Lubrizol must "speak, pay, then leave", he insisted on September 15 during the re-entry conference of the group of elected Réenchantons Rouen, of which he is the leader.

An option swept aside Charlotte Goujon.

"The relocation of a site has never been the solution, even less when it is in a country less concerned with environmental standards", she believes, joined on this point by Gérald Le Corre and Guillaume Blavette.

"And if we close Lubrizol, the question also arises for all the other industrial sites at risk in Rouen, slips the first.

And in this case, there is no longer a city.

"Guillaume Blavette, professor of geo history in the Rouen region, draws a parallel with the closure of the Petroplus refinery in Petite-Couronne - which everyone calls" the Shell "in Rouen, which closed in April 2013." I had at least two children per class whose parents found themselves unemployed, that does something, he says. And then when these industries leave, he remains behind brownfields that are very complicated to rehabilitate. "

"Work on the culture of risk"

There remains a question that everyone seems to agree to address: "that of knowing what we really need to produce today", explains Gérald Le Corre.

An invitation to switch Rouen towards a green economy with the hope, behind, that it requires less handling of dangerous chemicals.

It is on this subject that wants to make reflect "Rouen, capital of the world of après", series of meetings and workshops organized at the moment the city and the metropolis, until October 1st.

But if there is a transition, necessarily, it will not happen overnight.

So much so that the issue of controlling industrial risk remains an urgent matter in Rouen.

Things are moving, wants to believe Charlotte Goujon, who quotes the post in the metropolis that she took in mid-July: vice-president in charge, in particular, of industrial and health risk.

“There was no elected official in charge of these issues in the last term,” she explains.

Its roadmap includes at least two major axes: "that of working to reduce industrial risks at source with manufacturers and the State, and that of improving alerts to the population in the event of incidents and developing in Greater Rouen a real culture of risk.

"

Politics

Municipal 2020: Six months after Lubrizol, EELV wants to make Rouen "a laboratory of municipal ecology"

Society

Fire in Lubrizol: "It was so violent, we do not understand how the decision to reopen the plant was taken"

* The explosion of a stock of ammonium nitrate in September 2001 in Toulouse

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