Since the Lubrizol fire in 2019, everyone has heard about the risks of Seveso sites. It was on a site classified as high threshold that a fire broke out during the night from Saturday to Sunday around midnight, near Rennes, on the site of an industrial waste processing company, without causing any injuries.
The fire was extinguished around 3 a.m. and “the absence of wind during the night limited the dispersion of smoke,” said the Ille-et-Vilaine prefecture. The authorities assure that the “vertical plume […] did not reach the first houses located 600m away from the site to the east.
Household and industrial hazardous waste
Around 10 tonnes of waste, located in an eight meter deep pit, burned. Although the cause of the fire is not yet known, it could be linked to a reaction resulting from a chemical incompatibility between certain products.
The company “Triadis Rennes”, located in the Haie des Cognets industrial zone in Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande, collects, sorts and provides initial treatment of more than 700 tonnes of hazardous household and industrial waste such as solvents, phytosanitary products, asbestos and land polluted with heavy metals.
The site is classified ICPE Seveso high threshold, due to the nature of this waste. “In accordance with the regulations on ICPE Seveso classified sites, the firefighting water was stored in retention to be analyzed and treated,” specifies the prefecture.
