On Saturday, a 15-year-old girl died after falling through the roof of the Akers factory in Unieux, in the Loire. A 17-year-old girl who accompanied him was also seriously injured, firefighters said. There were four of them who entered the grounds of the old factory installed straddling the communes of Unieux and Fraisses. Their goal ? Practicing urban exploration or “urbex” on this disused site which has been closed since 2010. A practice which can prove dangerous as the structures of these industrial wastelands are sometimes weakened.
The two other people in this group were taken care of by the emergency services they had called. They would have been “witnesses to the accident” and obviously very shocked.
A wasteland “being decontaminated”
The Swedish steel group Akers closed this factory in 2010, which then employed 120 employees. Installed on a 6.5 hectare site, now owned by the community, it occasionally attracts squatters, graffiti artists, urbex practitioners or people who use it as illegal dumping. “This industrial wasteland is being decontaminated, before being demolished,” said Christophe Faverjon, PCF mayor of the town.
During the night from Sunday to Monday, a 17-year-old high school student, who was apparently practicing urbex alone, killed himself in Lyon by falling from the dome of the Hôtel-Dieu, from where he wanted to photograph the sunrise.