A fire broke out early Friday afternoon in the coking plant at the vast ArcelorMittal France site in Dunkirk, causing no injuries but leading to the evacuation of employees.
For an as yet undetermined reason, the fire broke out around 1:15 p.m. “on a conveyor belt supplying the coking plant with coal,” ArcelorMittal France management indicated by email.
“Immediately, internal firefighters intervened, then supported by external firefighters,” adds ArcelorMittal. “The teams on site were evacuated and no casualties were reported.”
The fire was still in progress at 2:30 p.m., according to the same source.
Covering 450 hectares, the ArcelorMittal site in Dunkirk (North) employs 3,200 employees.
-Of this total, the coking plant only employs around 300 people but “if the coke plant coughs, the whole site coughs”, because without it, there is no cast iron to feed the blast furnaces. , no gas for the Dunkirk district heating network,” said Gaëtan Lecocq, general secretary of CGT ArcelorMittal Dunkerque.
“There are no injuries, it is material, but it is a strategic installation,” he stressed. “Arcelor is letting us die, there is no more investment, we find ourselves with infrastructures in a deleterious state,” denounces the unionist.
In November, the steelmaker decided to delay its massive investment project in carbon-free steel at this Dunkirk site.
