The 140 students of the Belzunce comprehensive school (Xe) and their parents will have to be patient. Emergency evacuated from the establishment last Thursday after the accidental spill of mercury beads, the children and staff of the establishment will not be able to return to their classrooms before the week of November 18, and only if health conditions permit. .
As the municipality indicated the day after the incident, a specialized company was dispatched to the scene the same evening of the evacuation and has since been decontaminating and cleaning the entire school. A process which “will continue until the end of the week”, indicated the municipality and the Paris academy in a joint email addressed to parents of students that Le Parisien was able to consult.
“If it were to last any longer, it would be embarrassing”
“The safety of your children and educational staff constituting the first priority, the services of the City of Paris, in close collaboration with the Regional Health Agency of Île-de-France, will then carry out several series of surveys in order to to verify the perfect decontamination of the building,” indicates the letter.
The checks carried out under real operating conditions of the school (windows closed and heating) should enable the town hall services to resolve all doubts. “This is why the school will only be able to reopen under the condition of health readings returning to normal,” justifies the City of Paris.
Throughout the week from Tuesday November 12 to Friday November 15, children and teachers are welcomed in nearby schools: the Léon-Schwartzenberg, Chabrol, Martel schools and the Bernard-Palissy college. Class, canteen, extracurricular activity times and evening time are guaranteed, confirms the town hall.
“Normally it takes me 7 minutes to walk my daughter to school in the morning. There it goes to 11 minutes. This is acceptable, especially if it is for the safety and health of children. It may be more difficult for parents who live further away, but we tell ourselves that it's for four days. On the other hand, if it were to last longer, it would be embarrassing,” fears Juliette.
“What was this mercury doing there? »
Thursday's evacuation was prompted by contamination caused by the intervention of a professional who came to decontaminate a cabinet which contained mercury balls. Health surveys carried out the next day revealed that, during his mission, the agent had accidentally spilled the toxic product on the school floor. What the mayor of Paris described as “serious” and “unacceptable” professional misconduct, led to the intervention of around fifty firefighters and the establishment of an emergency evacuation procedure for the 230 people present on the site. the site, including 140 children.
In a message sent Thursday at 3:30 p.m., parents were asked to pick up their children at Saint-Vincent-de-Paul church where all the school's students were transferred. The children, equipped with oversocks, had received SNCF sandwich boxes to wait. “In the end it cost me a pair of shoes,” says Juliette, a student’s mother. It's more annoying for children who only have one pair of shoes and cannot afford to buy another. And quid of all the belongings that remain in the school: glasses, keys, cuddly toys…? »
If “no contamination” was noted, the City of Paris and the town hall of the 10th arrondissement indicated that a complaint would be filed against the company responsible and that an investigation was opened. Parents of students are also wondering about the presence of the toxic product in a school. “I'm having a hard time understanding what really happened. We are told about a cupboard in a classroom which contained toxic substances. But what was this mercury doing there? It is assumed that it was a broken thermometer, but in reality it is quite mysterious. All this lacks precise explanations,” Juliette wonders.
