"A trap", "a mousetrap": the firefighters intervened on the fire of the bar Rouennais Cuba Libre, where 14 people died in a fire in 2016, told the trying conditions of their intervention on the second day of the trial in correctional. Anthony Le Corre, who was one of the firefighters who entered the bar cellar where the victims were found, remembers a "slippery floor", "almost zero visibility, a narrow and steep staircase".
"With the escape route closed, it was clearly a trap," he told the bar of the Criminal Court of Rouen, before which appear Nacer and Amirouche Boutrif, brothers 48 and 40 years. They are judged to have "accidentally caused the death" of 14 people, died asphyxiated, and involuntarily wounded five others seriously, in the fire of their establishment on the night of 5 to 6 August 2016.
"If the emergency door had been unlocked, they could have escaped and they would have survived this tragedy"
The victims were celebrating 20 years of Ophélie in the basement of 24.4 m2 of this bar unauthorized nightclub, when two candles birthday cake, sparkling fires, ignited the ceiling of the 'staircase. "The air was not breathable, even at ground level," explains Anthony Le Corre. "There were between eight and nine bodies in the smoking room and the victims decided to meet together to try to survive."
But the black fumes have invaded everything. The firefighter says he found "two bodies entwined against each other, sitting, and head to head." It was about two brothers who died in the fire. "Can we talk about a mousetrap?" Asks a lawyer. "Yes," he agrees. Anthony Le Corre discovers the existence of an emergency exit during the intervention, but the door is locked. "If the emergency door had been unlocked the balance sheet would not have been this one.They could have escaped and they would have survived this tragedy," said his colleague Cédric Le Borgne.