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A teenager and the driver of a truck were killed after the collapse of a bridge, Monday morning November 18, in Mirepoix-sur-Tarn, about thirty kilometers from Toulouse (south-west of France). Beyond the emotion after this extremely rare accident, the controversy over the safety of bridges in France is revived.
How could a renovated bridge in 2003 and inspected in 2017 collapse? The survey may answer this question, but for the members of the bridges safety mission, this tragedy unfortunately gives them reason.
This mission was launched at the end of 2018, following the collapse of the Genoa viaduct in Italy and its 43 dead. After 6 months of work, senators come to this conclusion: 10% of the 250,000 French bridges are in poor condition and therefore dangerous.
This report had also underlined the insufficiency and even the inefficiency of the inspections carried out on the works especially on those which are under the responsibility of the communes.
The document also noted a lack of staff with the necessary technical skills. The rapporteurs of this mission called for a Marshall Plan to meet the needs and avoid a tragedy. That of Mirepoix-sur-Tarn could not be avoided.
According to the mayor, the bridge was not listed as sensitive. He presented only " normal evolutionary disorders ". The structure of the metal work dated back to 1931.
■ A situation more worrying than we imagine
Hervé Maurey, centrist senator of the Eure (Normandy) is president of this fact-finding mission: " This means that the situation is even more worrying than we imagine since a bridge that was supposedly inspected , on which one has supposedly done works collapses. That means, but that is the investigation that will say it, that the inspection was probably not satisfactory and the work either. So it shows that it is urgent to do as we ask in our report a real diagnosis of the state of the bridges in France, and the state of the bridges that are the responsibility of local communities and especially municipalities that have even more badly that the departments to assume this surveillance and this refreshing to avoid that one has again a new tragedy. All the more, and that seems to be the case, that today with GPS you suddenly have bridges that are experiencing an increase in traffic because they have been identified as allowing a faster route and will also increase the size of vehicles because GPS systems do not always distinguish. So, that too is a fact that must be integrated in relation to the sometimes rapid or even premature wear of certain bridges. "