"Problematic" health monitoring, insufficient resources, the Senate committee of inquiry into the spectacular Lubrizol fire denounces "unacceptable blind spots" in the prevention of industrial risks in France. The upper house pins the passage the government and in particular the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, in a report published Thursday. "Like health monitoring proper, the identification of health risk as practiced by the Ministry of Health was both late and incomplete", write the rapporteurs Christine Bonfanti-Dossat (LR) and Nicole Bonnefoy (PS) in their conclusions on this "major industrial accident", with no "apparent" victim.
For senators, no question of talking about a "chimney fire" as the boss of Lubrizol called the fire. This is indeed a "major health and ecological disaster". In its report, the commission of inquiry also points to the responsibility for the factory, which was inspected a year and a half before the fire, and whose premises had not been brought up to standard. The senators also criticize the industrialist for not having been able to provide the quantity and composition of stocks, which went up in smoke on September 26.
Forty recommendations
Also in the sights of parliamentarians: the public authorities' crisis communication. They denounce a "hazardous language". We remember the multiplication of press conferences, one to two per day. Sometimes very technical speaking. "How to ask people who are under the cloud of smoke to understand something other than 'if there is no acute toxicity, well it is that there is medium or low toxicity'", s' questions at the microphone of Europe 1 Senator Christine Bonfanti-Dossat, co-rapporteur of the commission of inquiry.
The senators address forty recommendations in their report and ask for the creation of a true culture of industrial risk. They propose for example to include training in industrial risks in the education code and to organize regular full-scale exercises, involving the whole population.