It was a Sunday morning, April 28, 2013. There was no rush. On the second floor, Chantal Robert was still in her bed, as was Janos Marton on the fourth. Upstairs, Rachida Laidouni was getting ready, a comb at hand. Banal scenes from a weekend like any other, suddenly swept away by a terrible explosion.
It was 11:16 a.m. In a few moments, all four floors collapsed. Sixteen injured, and three lifeless bodies found in the rubble: those of Chantal Robert, 61 years old, Rachida Laidouni, 62 years old, and Janos Marton, 75 years old.
The nature of the explosion never posed any difficulty: a gas leak, which occurred at 8A of Allée Beethoven, a bar in the Foyer Rémois built in 1958 in the Wilson district. The location of the leak, however, is debated. According to the first expert, interviewed this Monday, June 17, several “clues” allow us to locate it in Rachida Laidouni’s apartment, at the gas stove, with two hypotheses retained: either a “microleak” resulting from the progressive loosening of a joint located upstream of the supply tap, or a leak located at the outlet of the tap due to disengagement of the connecting hose.
Two companies and a technician at the helm
Could the tragedy have been avoided? For the prosecution and the investigating judge, whatever the hypothesis adopted, the answer is yes! Presumed source of the leak, the inlet pipe of Rachida Laidouni’s gas cooker was not equipped with a new generation tap that the heating engineer Mulot – according to the prosecution’s analysis – should have installed when installing the new boilers in 2007. An interpretation that the defense will not fail to contest but this Monday, on the first day of the trial, it was the two other defendants – the service provider Must and his technician working in the building – who focused the attention of the court.
As part of the contract signed with the Foyer Rémois, the company Must Multiservice provides “safety diagnosis” in each apartment once a year. His technician visited Madame Laidouni on January 16, 2013. On his intervention sheet, he had checked the presence of a new generation faucet (ROAI, integrated automatic shutter faucet, inside which there is a valve which stops the gas supply in the event of tearing downstream). However, according to the prosecution, the old tap had not been replaced.
Passing of arms around a tap
“I did a visual check. For me, it was an ROAI”, assures the employee, who denies having falsely completed the form. A few questions later, he seems to contradict himself: “To know if it’s an ROAI, you have to take it apart and test it. » An embarrassing reminder from the prosecution followed: before the investigating judge, he declared that he had only learned the difference between an old and new generation faucet during the assessments, during the investigation.
The technician doesn’t remember saying that. Statement misunderstood and taken out of context, intervenes his lawyer, verb loudly. Call to order from the president. At the start of the evening, the trial returned to calmer waters with the questioning of the first of the experts. Hearings continue on Tuesday.
Trained “specifically” in gas safety seven months after the explosion
The court questioned the Must technician at length about his professional background. Previously a dock attendant, the man became an electrician following a retraining. He first carried out several temporary assignments for Must, before being hired in 2010 as a “multi-service technician”. “It’s in the contract: we are asked to check the carpentry, the plumbing, the maintenance of the boilers.
– So you were hired as an electrician, not as a heating engineer, without gas training? », the president is surprised. She is even more direct with the director of Must, questioned in his capacity as legal representative of the company: “An electrician is not a gas worker: do you send an electrician to carry out gas installation checks?
– We don’t let them go alone”he reassures. “We have a companionship, a duplicate system. They have parallel training. It’s a hitch that boosts versatility. » The manager specifies that Must recruits as a priority in “the breeding ground for electromechanics” because these are people who “are already in a maintenance logic”easier to train in other specialties.
Still an employee of the company (he became team leader), the technician explains having followed an initial two-month training ” in pairs ” with a staff ” experimented “ during his temporary assignments, then a second two-week training course after his hiring. It was in November 2013, seven months after the explosion, that he followed a “specific gas safety training”.
“Because of the accident?”
– No, it was planned. »
