While some residents are beginning to be able to return to their homes to collect some belongings, a woman comes out of her house, a clock in her hand, in tears. “She was on the chimney which split in two at the time of the earthquake,” she explains. We just found her, the time blocked when everything stopped…”
A little more than forty-eight hours after the earthquake which occurred on Friday evening near Niort, “the shock wave, in terms of emotion, has greatly exceeded the west of France”, launched this Monday morning, Christophe Béchu, Minister of Ecological Transition traveling to La Laigne, a village of 500 inhabitants located in Charente-Maritime, near the epicenter, and particularly devastated by this earthquake.
“We were barefoot, I was crying, we were wondering what was going on…”
“I had the impression that we were being bombed at the house, says another resident, Magalie Poulteau. Everything was falling on us, the ground was shaking everywhere, it was making a huge noise. The worst was in the living room, which is the most affected room in our house. I took my three-year-old in my arms and went out into the garden, then out into the street… We were barefoot, I was crying, we were wondering what was going on. We did not imagine an earthquake at all, at first I thought it was the church that fell on us, because it was under construction. And then we started to see cracked houses everywhere, and people talking about the earthquake. In all, it lasted a few seconds, but it seemed endless to us. »
This resident’s house is classified as red: “this means that you no longer have the right to live there, and that you have to be very careful when you come to collect things because it is very risky. “The buildings have been classified into four categories, explains Lieutenant-Colonel Pascal Couzinier, head of the northwest territorial grouping: “black, no one comes in, red, people or firefighters can enter to recover property, yellow and green people can continue to live in their homes. “We love our house, continues Magalie Poulteau, but psychologically we are affected, it will be complicated to come and live here again, unless we can demolish to rebuild. We’ll see. »
Beware of malicious acts and burglaries
“In total we have recognized 525 homes since Friday, in four operational sectors, Cram-Chaban and La Laigne being the two municipalities most concerned”, details Lieutenant-Colonel Couzinier, who counts “95 firefighters on site, 24 vehicles , six teams of experts, a drone team, and two rescue teams in dangerous environments. »
At the same time, the firefighters carry out numerous security missions and tarping operations to prevent water from penetrating inside the buildings and aggravating the situation. The La Rochelle gendarmerie company was also deployed on the spot, and in particular set up a filtering dam at the entrance to La Laigne, in an attempt to limit burglaries and malicious acts. “For the moment, we are not letting anyone into the houses who are not mandated by their insurance, explains Rémi de Gouvion Saint-Cyr, commander of the Charente-Maritime gendarmerie group. But this will only last for a while, we will have to continue to remain vigilant in the coming weeks, because people may be asked for renovation or roofing work. It really has to be their insurance that contacts them. »
“What are we going to do with our house? »
When she talks about the earthquake, Sarah, another resident of La Laigne, also describes “the sensation of a bomb crashing at our feet”. “I was on the terrace with my two babies, and I started to see rubble falling,” she continues. She also believed at first that the church, located right next to it, was collapsing: “I quickly returned with my two babies, and then my husband told me that it was an earthquake. earth. The front door was blocked, he had to break it down so that we could get out. »
For the moment, Sarah and her family are relocated to a campsite for three weeks. “But we don’t know anything for the aftermath,” she worries. And what are we going to do with our house? It’s cracked all over, and inside there’s war. Everything fell to the ground, everything is broken. Can we get our things back? I was just able, after several hours of waiting, to pick up some things on Saturday morning that I piled up in big suitcases, in particular clothes for my babies, otherwise I have nothing. »
The rehousing of victims, a major issue
About a third of La Laigne “has been evacuated, with uninhabitable houses”, estimates Bruno Asperti, first deputy mayor. “So it’s a third of the village that will live for a year, two years, outside. I myself am concerned and I know that my house, I will not see it again for a long time. Many manage for the moment to relocate with friends or others, but it is short term. The challenge is to find long-term accommodation solutions. »
The question of the rehousing of the affected inhabitants is today the most urgent to settle. It is partly to respond to this that the Minister for the Ecological Transition, accompanied by the Minister for the City Olivier Klein, made the trip on Monday. “We will only have a global vision of the situation on Tuesday”, estimated Christophe Béchu, who announced that he was going to release “the emergency rehousing aid fund, a device which can take, for six months at 100 %, the cost of rehousing those who are directly impacted by the earthquake. »
In the longer term, can earthquake prediction models be reviewed? “We know the areas with earthquake probability, and this sector is an area with moderate seismic risk,” recalls Christophe Béchu. But we still have difficulty predicting when these earthquakes will happen, we have no tool to say that it could happen tomorrow or in a week. We will obviously take stock, after all that, to find out if additional things could have helped us, but first we have to be alongside the populations and organize rehousing. »