Drama of the rue d’Aubagne, collapsed buildings in Lille, in Bordeaux, buildings endangered in Toulon, Orléans, Manosque and, more locally, at the top of the Cours Sextius, the Place des Cardeurs, the Milhaud-Artéa building on boulevard de la République or even the bottom of Cours Mirabeau this summer… Old centers with sometimes century-old buildings often find themselves weakened by climate change, thermal episodes, windy, rainy, including the negligence of owners or co-owners, responsible for the good condition of their building, successive works or even changes in the water table.
80 ordinary peril orders in progress
Aix is no exception to the rule with its buildings without deep foundations, nor in reinforced concrete as is the case with more recent buildings. Aix, a water town, also has a labyrinth of basements with cellars sometimes equipped with wells, often blocked by private developments. “These basements were clay cellars. We often have good faith requests from town planning to develop cellars that already exist. We were, for example, recently asked for a yoga room. Which means to say that it is tiled, the walls plastered, and therefore a building which can no longer live as it was originally planned. We must be extremely vigilant in what happens in the basements of the buildings. These are cellars and that. cannot be habitable parts, except to keep the cellar in its original state”, underlines Jean-Louis Vincent, elected to town planning for the City of Aix.
