France: All it took was one stroke of a shovel for the building to collapse

Thursday, November 7 in Marseille, the trial of the collapses of rue d'Aubagne began, in a packed room, a sign of the “considerable trauma” that this tragedy of unworthy housing and its eight deaths has inflicted on the city. “Apart from singular accidents such as gas explosions such as rue de Trévise in Paris, the simultaneous and sudden collapse of almost three buildings is extremely rare,” Fabrice Mazaud, one of the experts who participated in the investigation, assured Tuesday.

What made it possible was the number of “pathologies” that affected these buildings. As proof, the architect underlined, it only took one stroke of a shovel for number 67 to collapse, when it was decided to destroy this building, after the collapse of numbers 63 and 65, on November 5, 2018, a few hours earlier.

There were “a significant number of visits and assessments on these three buildings, in the 15 years preceding the collapses,” notes the president. The first alert on 63 dates from 2003. Then, in 2011, the sole occupant of 67 left it, due to its dilapidation. From 2014, there was a “strong and major alert for the occupants of 65”, and in 2015 the Nicol report issued a “general alert” on Marseille housing, lists the magistrate.

During 2018, reports from tenants of 65 are accelerating. In March, some people find it difficult to close their doors. At the end of September, an expert reported a swollen wall, cellars covered in mud and traces of sewage and leaks. Then in mid-October came the visit of another expert, one of the 16 defendants. He remained on site “about an hour to conclude that there was a dangerous situation” and requested emergency work, the president recalls.

“Why, after this series of worrying events, were the tenants allowed to return to their homes?” asks the president. Were the expert's recommendations followed in all respects? Was the “dangerous” situation not sufficiently advanced for the evacuation to be ordered? In the dock, Julien Ruas, deputy to the mayor at the time Jean-Claude Gaudin, then responsible for these questions of buildings in danger, is not present to listen to this story.

“I hope to be able to get out of my apartment, I am in a trap,” wrote Marie-Emmanuelle Blanc, tenant of the 5th, on October 31, in an email to her trustee, also among the defendants. Water is reported in the cellar. Tiles exploded above the front door over the weekend. “We will take care of it, you can stay at home,” replies the manager of the trustee.

The day before the tragedy, a tenant noticed cracks in the wall tiles in his kitchen. In the middle of the night, Marie-Emmanuelle Blanc called the firefighters to report creaks, the impossibility of opening her door and windows, and the enlargement of cracks. The fireman offers to come, while assuring him that normally a building does not collapse suddenly.

The president broadcasts the video of another tenant, the same morning, who shows the warning signs of the collapse in his home and slips, in voice-over: “There is an emergency, in a few hours it got worse.” In the background, knocks resonate, undoubtedly those of tenants trapped in their homes. A few minutes later, their building at number 65 and the neighboring number 63 collapsed like houses of cards.

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