Paris (AFP)
The investigation into the fire of the chemical plant Lubrizol of Rouen, which occurred on September 26, was entrusted on Tuesday to Parisian investigating judges, said the Paris prosecutor in a statement.
Three magistrates of the public health pole of the court of Paris will be in charge of conducting the investigations, within the framework of a judicial information open notably for "putting in danger of the life of others", specifies the parquet floor.
Six other qualifications were selected for this investigation, including "involuntary fire destruction due to an obviously deliberate breach of a security obligation" and "operation of a facility classified without respect for the general rules".
"To date, 545 complaints have been filed," said the prosecutor's office, which said Tuesday organized a meeting to review the first elements gathered by investigators.
The investigations, initially conducted under the direction of the Rouen public prosecutor's office, had been entrusted to the Paris prosecutor's office at the beginning of October because of the importance of the incident and the "technicality" of the investigations.
They aim to determine the origin of the fire, the conditions in which it spread but also the responsibilities of the various actors in this incident.
According to the Paris public prosecutor's office, nearly one hundred witnesses were auditioned, about sixty videos analyzed, and many documents seized during searches carried out on October 10.
But "the many acts already carried out have not made it possible to determine, at this stage, the causes of this fire nor to locate with precision its origin", recalls the parquet floor.
On September 26, around 02:30, a part of the Lubrizol plant and three buildings of Normandie Logistique were ravaged by a huge fire, which caused a huge plume of black smoke of 22 km. The disaster did not make a victim.
The total quantity of products burned amounted to 9,505 tons, of which 5,253 tons of chemicals on the Lubrizol site and 4,252 tons of products on the Normandie Logistique site (of which 1,691 tons of Lubrizol products).
According to Eric Schnur, CEO of Lubrizol Corporation, the fire was reported to be outside the factory. On Friday, he said he wants to restart the plant "as quickly as possible".
Secretary of State for the Ecological Transition Emmanuelle Wargon, however, found it "premature" to say that the plant would reopen "very quickly". "It is not" to the CEO of Lubrizol "to comment on the dangerousness of the products (...) it belongs to the health authorities, to the independent authorities," she said.
© 2019 AFP