The precautionary principle is required in Rouen. The town hall announced on Saturday evening that a school, located in the perimeter around two buildings containing asbestos which collapsed after a fire last weekend, will remain closed “until further notice”.
“In application of the precautionary principle and even if the School Group has already been the subject of a thorough cleaning (…), the City takes the decision to keep the Pépinières School Group closed (…) until further notice,” indicates the town hall in a press release. Initially, this school group was scheduled to reopen next Monday.
In search of asbestos
The results of a third sampling campaign, carried out since Friday evening at 10 p.m., “confirm the absence of detection of asbestos in the air for all the samples”. They “also confirm the absence of detection of asbestos in the sand of the primary school sandbox (4 samples)”, according to the press release.
“On the other hand, 8/20 surface samples (6 indoors, 2 outdoors) indicate that asbestos (chrysotile fiber) is detected,” specifies the text. The results of these analyzes “are online, available like all other analysis results on www.rouen.fr”.
A week ago, without causing any casualties, a fire devastated two disused buildings from the 1970s in Rouen. Constructed of steel and glass, they had collapsed in the night under the heat of the flames.
As the town hall recalled, “the notorious presence of asbestos in these buildings” was known. A security perimeter had been defined covering districts of Rouen and the neighboring commune of Petit-Quevilly with the objective of controlling “the level of concentration of asbestos fibers”, explained eight days ago the Deputy Mayor Fatima El Khili.