Almost six years after the gas explosion which occurred on rue de Trévise in Paris (9th arrondissement), residents of the buildings concerned are gradually returning to their homes. Vanessa Mallet, resident of number 6, gave in detail for CNEWS the winding story of recent years.
An obstacle course that will come to an end, six years after a night of horror. From November 4, the victims of the buildings on rue de Trévise in Paris (9th) were authorized to return to their apartments, for the first time since the gas explosion that occurred on January 12, 2019. This killed four people. and injured around sixty others.
A few days before returning to her apartment located on the 5th floor of 6, rue de Trévise, Vanessa Mallet, mother of two children, shared her state of mind with CNEWS. Over the years of reconstruction work and various assessments, this disaster victim has mobilized for her neighbors, taking the lead – alongside Dominique Paris – of the Trévise Ensemble collective.
“This collective drama created bonds, and it was important for me to be able to help others. My personality means that I need to be in hyperaction in order not to sink, in addition to having always had the feeling that alone we are nothing,” she confided, evoking the personal difficulties in finding quickly an apartment, since the explosion until today. “We have moved six times since 2019. The last time was last June, before the Olympics, so I let you imagine the difficulty of finding a home,” she explained, while, like her, Nearly 200 people in total found themselves without housing overnight after the tragedy.
Few resources on the town hall side
Present to support the victims, “from start to finish” as Vanessa easily points out, the district town hall did not, however, have the necessary means to rehouse all the victims of the explosion. On the other hand, the costs of the latter were fully reimbursed to the victims, mainly via personal insurers, before the establishment of a compensation fund.
Speaking of her upcoming return, alongside her husband and her two children, now aged 17 and 18 in their apartment, Vanessa also returned to the indelible mark of the shock.
“The last memories on site are the blast of the explosion, our windows shattering, the glass all over the ground. The first instinct is to put on your shoes and run into the children’s room, where a friend of my daughter who had stayed that evening was sleeping, and to see if everyone is alive,” recalls the mother of a family.
“I don’t know if I can’t wait to go back anymore”
During all these years, Vanessa Mallet has supported her neighbors in their administrative procedures while holding her family at arm’s length, with the hope of returning. “We were starting from scratch, we had nothing left in the apartment. When the explosion occurred, the first three floors were blown away. We had to go through our neighbor’s balcony, to then be evacuated by the firefighters,” continues Vanessa, recounting the unfolding of this “night of horror” of January 12, 2019.
But today the feeling is shared. “In the end we lived more outside – during these six years – than at home (the family having moved in only a few years before the tragedy). We had this apartment at 6, rue de Trévise renovated, and it was to be the one where our children (aged 11 and 12 in 2019) would grow up. All this time I wanted to go back, today I don’t know if I can’t wait to go back. But as long as we haven’t slept there, it’s difficult to plan ahead,” added Vanessa.
The representative of the Trévise Ensemble collective confirmed to CNEWS what her counterpart Dominique Paris said last week in the press: all the occupants of the damaged buildings should not return home. “Many neighbors have made the decision not to return. They want to turn the page. For some of them, hearing about “Treviso” even became phobic. “The one below will move back in, but not all the residents on the other floors will,” assured Vanessa Mallet.
