The big fire underway since 8 a.m. Thursday morning near the Chef de baie commercial port in La Rochelle is now “content“according to the prefecture of Charente-Maritime, but it will take several days according to the firefighters to completely extinguish the disaster. About fifty of them remain engaged in the night from Thursday to Friday, they were 120 with 22 intervention vehicles in the Thursday, a 72-meter basket arrived on site to facilitate the intervention of the firefighters at nearly 50 meters high.
The fire broke out in a SICA Atlantique grain silo and spread to the three adjoining silos in the morning. It is a conveyor belt which allows the grain to be mounted inside the silo which is at the origin of the fire, but it will be necessary to wait for the expertise to know the exact reasons for the disaster.
The firefighters tried Thursday evening to smother the residual hearths at the top of the silos with a carpet of foam for two of them and in the third, more difficult to access, carried out a “nitrogen inerting” (replacement of air with nitrogen to extinguish the fire). As soon as the fireplaces are extinguished, a long monitoring phase will begin. : “these are large silos, with large quantities of grain, inertia in the development and outbreak of claims that can be very, very slow“explains Lieutenant-Colonel François Teaves of the Charente-Maritime firefighters.
The silos containing several thousand tons of grain will be emptied
Inside each silo, 8,000 tonnes of grain, which will be emptied as soon as the situation allows, will be stored on the Grand Port Maritime site. The maneuver will reduce the risk of explosion: “On a silo, there is always an explosive risk, but all the procedures put in place will avoid it“indicated this Thursday morning during a press briefing Lieutenant-Colonel François Teaves of the Charente-Maritime firefighters.
The security perimeter is maintained identically this Friday: traffic within a radius of 100 meters around the silos is prohibited**.** Several streets are closed: rue de la Repentie, rue Deflandre, rue Poincaré, rue Béthencourt, Denfert-Rochereau, and Moncalm, as is the access ramp to the La Pallice district from La Rocade, from the Ile de Ré exit**.** The loading of fuel in the neighboring oil depots is stopped**.**
The authorities were reassuring about the presence of these oil depots which worry the inhabitants of the La Pallice district. As a precaution, the security perimeter which should have been 60 meters around the site has been widened to 100 meters, indicated the secretary general of the Prefecture. The fuel storages are all more than 110 meters away.
Local police
The RESPIRE association denounces a lack of information
The association RESPIRE, which defends the environment in the district of La Pallice denounced, Thursday at the beginning of the afternoon in a press release, a lack of public information. “Admittedly, the people on the list did receive a reassuring telephone message from the town hall, but the majority of the population was plunged into disarray.” writes the association. The SICA website is several hundred meters from housesbut this fire raises several questions according to RESP.IRE: “what to do in such a case? Are there risks of explosion and impact on neighboring sites? What consequences for health?”
The emergency services carried out smoke detection readings in the streets of the La Pallice district to respond to the concerns of the inhabitants, specifies the prefecture in a new press release. “No positive measurements were detected at ground level,” risk assessment reconnaissance actions continue this Thursday evening.
The prefecture further specifies that a “regular information is published” on its website, as well as that of the city of La Rochelle, on their respective social networks, as well as via the “La Rochelle on your fingertips” application.
Frédéric Gastine
The prefecture calls on the population to not to go on site, to facilitate the intervention of the services concerned and to follow the diversions put in place. The large plume of black smoke that was visible this morning for several kilometers to the neighboring department of Vendée , turned white in the late morning. A Departmental Operational Center was activated at 9 a.m. this Thursday morning by the prefecture to coordinate the action of all the services involved in this fire.
Several elected officials and officials were on site in La Pallice, this Thursday morning: Sylvie Marcilly, the president of the Charente-Maritime department participated in the press briefing, as well as Stéphane Villain, mayor of Chatelaillon and president of SDIS 17, the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service.