They hope to assert the damage suffered, before a possible criminal result. A first judicial step for some 300 families residing in the Air-Bel city in Marseille is being played out this Friday in civil proceedings, at the Muy barracks, the room where the so-called “non-standard” trials are held by the number of victims or defendants. This hearing is the first outcome for a case started almost six years ago, after the death of Djamel Haouache in 2017, 46 years old at the time, who succumbed to an infection by Legionella, a bacterium which develops and proliferates in water systems.
A first report from 2011
Soraya Slimani is the lawyer who took on the case and represents the families. From this civil hearing, she “expects reparation which will allow the recognition of the status of victims of the residents” and hopes “to do justice to the tenants”. Among the respondents are Logirem, Unicil and Erilia, the three social landlords of Air-Bel, but also the company Cofex, which carried out annual health monitoring, and Engie, in charge of the maintenance of the network of water.
Air-Bel is a deprived city in the south of Marseille with 1,200 social housing units where more than 6,000 inhabitants live. The first report of the presence of legionella dates back to 2011, but social landlords only undertook their first studies to renovate equipment until 2015, contenting themselves with massively chlorinating the water network. Obviously insufficient chlorine shocks, since analyzes carried out by the Regional Health Agency in 2018, after the death of Djamel Haouachache revealed concentrations of legionella 40 times higher than the standards.
“For years, the tenants who fulfilled their part of the contract by honoring their rents, had hyperchlorinated water available with its share of skin problems and hair loss, and anxieties”, argues the lawyer. Legionellosis can be contracted by drinking water but also by inhalation. It proliferates in waters of 25 to 45 degrees and most often manifests itself in mild forms but can prove fatal to people subject to chronic illnesses. In fact, many inhabitants have applied themselves to drinking only bottled water and being content with cold showers.
A criminal lawsuit?
Renovation work was carried out by social landlords between 2017 and 2021, for an amount of 8.1 million euros, they specified to Provence. According to Soraya Slimani, the latter are trying to turn against the Cofex company which has not fulfilled its advice obligations. Since the end of 2022, the city has been undergoing a vast requalification project estimated at 185 million euros. Armelle Bouty, the lawyer for the Cofex company, says her “perplexity” and her “misunderstanding” of the questioning of their client. “Cofex has been carrying out health monitoring since 2005 on behalf of social landlords. The legal expert considered in his report that Cofex had given all the necessary recommendations. After the deadline for the implementation of the works, it is something else”, indicates Armelle Bouty for whom “the exoneration of Cofex seems obvious”.
As for the lawyer for the victims, she hopes that a civil conviction will speed up and lead to a criminal hearing, while the investigation, in particular for manslaughter, is still in progress at the public health center of the Marseille court. . Legionnaires’ disease is a recurring problem in certain major Marseille housing estates. In the summer of 2021, it was in La Savine, a city north of Marseille, that a lady died of the consequences of legionellosis.