More than a week later, the fire is still smoldering in the non-hazardous industrial waste recovery center in Saint-Chamas, a town on the banks of the Berre pond, in the Bouches-du-Rhône. “The fire is under control but it still gives off fumes given the volume of waste that burns”, observes the mayor Didier Khelfa, who always invites the fragile and vulnerable to avoid any physical activity outside.
According to AtmoSud, which has deployed monitoring stations to measure the impact on air quality, the level of fine particles has reached a peak of 800 µg / m3 at the height of the fire. This is a level comparable to what Beijing may experience during pollution episodes, according to Dominique Robin, director of AtmoSud. “The levels are currently lower, thanks to a north / west wind regime which has spread the smoke towards the Etang de Berre, but they deserve real vigilance, things are not under control”, he notes. . The mistral, expected over the next few days, could indeed rekindle the smoldering fire.
A fire “exceptional due to the volumes involved”
About ten firefighters from SDIS 13 are still on site. “Waste reception center fires are common, but this one is exceptional in terms of the volumes involved”, explains Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Bisone. He has been in charge of rescue operations since the fire broke out on the morning of Sunday, December 26. “We had to pull 6 km of pipes to bring the water, but the bottom line is that there was not 1,000 m3 of waste, but at least 20,000 m3”, he says. The site was indeed under the radar of the prevention service of the SDIS, since a prefectural judgment of December 14, 2021 revealing this situation.
For several months, the mayor of Saint-Chamas has been playing the role of whistleblower about the company in question, Recyclage Concept 13. “Exceeding volumes like this is irresponsible”, denounces Didier Khelfa, calling for change the rules of the game: “Today, anyone can declare themselves as an installation classified for the protection of the environment and be authorized to store up to 1,000 m3 of waste, without more checks than that. “We must learn the lessons of this fire, and provide the means to coerce, to impose sanctions,” he adds. The decree gave the company until December 31, 2021 to go back below the 1,000 m3 mark. The fire broke out a few days before this deadline.
Steel structures threatening to fall
The firefighters proceeded to a massive watering of the building, to reduce the fire to a smoldering fire. “This very large flooding operation made it possible to divide the density of the fumes by ten,” relates Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Bisone. To really extinguish it, one would have to have access to the mass which was consumed and the building to fall to the steel structures which risked collapsing. “A building that is no less than 70 meters long, where piles of crushed and well-compacted garbage rise up to 5 meters high. Except that the responsibility normally falls to the operator of the site.
For the moment, the firefighters intervene on a pile which is accessible to them, outside the building, of several hundred cubic meters. “We are going to spread it out and put an end to the combustion”, continues the operations commander. Listening to him, the situation is bound to last as long as it is not possible to intervene on the main building. “If there are no toxic or aggressive releases, that is not a problem, if AtmoSud’s measurements are not good, it is not the same thing. The prefecture of Bouches-du-Rhône was to communicate on the subject at the end of the day.