Europe 1 with AFP 10 p.m., January 16, 2023

An industrial building of the Bolloré Logistics group - which contains lithium batteries - was affected by a fire on Monday evening in Grand-Couronne near Rouen.

The prefect assured that the SDIS had carried out air quality measurements which show "no need for protection of the populations".

A major fire was underway Monday evening in an industrial building of Bolloré Logistics containing lithium batteries located in Grand-Couronne, south of Rouen, we learned from the firefighters and the prefecture.

The site, which is not Seveso classified, was evacuated at the end of the afternoon.

The fire, which then spread to a warehouse containing tires, did not cause any injuries and it is not dangerous for the populations, according to these sources.

“About thirty trucks and a hundred firefighters are on site,” explained Lieutenant Guillaume Casada, in charge of press relations at the Seine-Maritime fire and rescue service, specifying that an emergency call triggering the The intervention of the firefighters took place at 4:32 p.m.

During a press briefing by telephone, the prefect of Seine Maritime Pierre-André Durand assured at the start of the evening that he had taken over the management of operations, which had until then been coordinated by the mayor of Grand Couronne Julie Lesage.

"There is no danger" 

"The area adjacent to that initially affected in this warehouse, which contains approximately 70,000 tires, is now on fire, so I took charge," said Pierre-André Durand, who specified that "110 firefighters were at the work" around 8 p.m., helped by "tugs that pump water to extinguish car batteries and foam to extinguish tires".

The first residents are just over 500 meters from the burnt site, according to the prefect.

Update |

Fire at the Bolloré Logistics #GrandCouronne site



The fire spread to a nearby warehouse housing tires.

It will probably require several hours of intervention.



A hundred firefighters are on site



Our press release⤵️ pic.twitter.com/HLpqaaIV8l

– Prefect of Normandy and Seine-Maritime (@Prefet76) January 16, 2023

The prefect assured that the SDIS had carried out air quality measurements which show "no need for protection of the populations, neither evacuation nor confinement: the extinction of the hearth will take several hours but under the plume of smoke it there is no danger".

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Colonel Remy Weclawiak, deputy departmental director of SDIS76, present at his side, explained that "the smoke left very high in the sky, there is a good dispersion and the readings near the site and a little outside did not find carbon monoxide, hydrochloric acid or hydrocyanic acid, the levels are zero".

"A crisis unit" 

Remy Weclawiak has not yet been able to give a figure as to the extent of the plume, which extends towards the southeast.

"No casualties are to be deplored, the employees were evacuated" from this site "subject to authorization and not Seveso" on the banks of the Seine, still according to the prefecture.

Contacted by AFP, the Bolloré group said it had "set up a crisis unit in conjunction with the prefecture", specifying that it had "no information on the causes of the fire" at this stage. , nor on the extent of the damage.

Located in the town of Grand-Couronne, this building was built about fifteen kilometers south of the city center of Rouen on a site much clearer than that of the Lubrizol factory where 10,000 tonnes of chemicals had gone up in smoke in a serious fire in September 2019.