It is one of those small side streets which outline the Wolf-Wagner district in Mulhouse, a small street of nothing at all, which concentrated so much pain in such a short moment that it still remains marked, twenty years later. the gas explosion which blew away the building located at number 12. “On December 26, 2004 and the days that followed, I was in charge of the relief operations for this terrible disaster,” reacted the colonel of firefighters, Philippe Schultz, in a letter sent to our editorial staff this Saturday morning. “Since then, on each anniversary date, my thoughts have been with the unfortunate victims, their families, but also with all the emergency services involved, including the firefighters of Mulhouse and Haut-Rhin who worked tirelessly, day and night, with the hope, until the last moment, of being able to extract and save buried people […]. I would like to emphasize that there is, twenty years later, no miracle solution which, if it had been within our reach in 2004, both in terms of method, number, training and skills of rescuers as well as the equipment at their disposal, would have allowed us to save the life of only one of these [personnes]. » And to conclude with “a message of support to the families who commemorate the disappearance of their loved ones”.
They were indeed present this Saturday morning, in a semi-circle facing the commemorative stele, carried by the bagpipes of the Celtics Ried's pipers. Those who “hoped to find loved ones alive in the rubble”, as the president of the Association of Victims of Rue de la Martre Mulhouse, Jean-Pierre Moppert, in the presence of Patricia, Angélique, Sandra, Christophe, all these women and men, red eyes, weak but caring smiles, children, their children, born, sometimes, after the disaster.
Jean-Pierre Moppert: “There was no miracle”
Surrounded by an audience of elected officials, “out of a duty of memory and a pledge of respect”, including the former senator-mayor Jean-Marie Bockel, present from the first hours, days, weeks, then months, then years, the lawyer Sophie Pujol, representatives of the fire brigade and GRDF, a handful of anonymous people. Emergency services freed the last victim on December 27, 2004, at 4:45 p.m., almost twenty-four hours after the explosion. “There was no miracle,” breathed Jean-Pierre Moppert. But, twenty years later, we can bear witness to these destinies broken one evening at the end of the year, reforged in the pain, sometimes silent, of the strength of these bonds woven over the course of trials. People strong enough to meet, every end of the year, in this seemingly calm little street, Rue de la Martre, with “visible or invisible scars”.
