Solidarity fire in Lausanne –
The Bessières office saved by volunteers from Friborg and Neuchâtel
While it threatened to die out, the traditional vigil of the Lausanne bridge will finally be able to continue thanks to an unprecedented surge of mutual aid.
Published today at 12:00 p.m.
The guardians of the Bessières bridge watch over lonely and suicidal people during the holidays. Here in December 2023.
Patrick Martin
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The fire of solidarity on the Bessières bridge regains color. Last year, the organizers had great difficulty in recruiting good souls to watch over the lonely with dark thoughts. While it has been crackling for forty-four years in Lausanne between Christmas and New Year, the fire almost went out this year, due to a lack of around thirty guards, or half of the minimum number to ensure permanence. .
It was counting without the cry from the heart of the association, relayed by “20 minutes” early November. “This call has provoked an exceptional outpouring of solidarity,” rejoices its president, Herbert Stock. Not only with the people of Lausanne, “but also with volunteers from Neuchâtel and Fribourg, something unheard of since 1980”!
A life saved in 2021
This unprecedented mobilization will allow the flame to burn continuously from December 23 to January 3 to help people in distress. The fire guards will follow one another on the bridge twenty-four hours a day, with pickets for eight hours in a row. In 2021, volunteers saved the life of a father in his sixties during Christmas night.
But the initiative is not only a shield against suicides. It also helps people who are going through a delicate moment and who need a caring ear to listen to them, underlines Herbert Stock.
Last year, “the day before, for example, made it possible to come to the aid of an elderly lady who had just lost her husband, but who did not dare say goodbye to him at the chapel of Saint-Roch,” he remembers. A volunteer accompanied her to the morgue to help her through this difficult ordeal. The next day, she came back with a homemade cake to thank us.”
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Thibault New Weme is a journalist for the Vaud section. After a Bachelor in political science, he obtained his Master's degree at the Academy of Journalism and Media (AJM) at the University of Neuchâtel. He also worked with the editorial staff of Le Temps.More info
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