“Incomprehensible”. This is the word that emerges for the victims as for the parties implicated after the decision, almost three years after the facts, of three Parisian examining magistrates to put an end to their investigations into the fatal explosion in the street. from Treviso, in Paris.
On the morning of January 12, 2019, a very strong detonation caused by a gas leak had blown this street in the 9th arrondissement of the capital. The toll is heavy: four people, including two firefighters, were killed, 66 others were injured and some 400 residents affected.
The mayor of Paris and the trustee indicted
The magistrates of the “collective accidents” pole of the Paris judicial tribunal sent a letter to all the parties on December 13 to inform them that their investigation was closed. This decision causes “a misunderstanding” for Virginie Mallet, disaster victim and general secretary of the association Treviso ensemble.
In principle, the prosecution is now required to deliver its final indictment within three months, before a final decision by the investigating magistrates on whether or not to hold a trial. During the investigation, the Paris town hall and the building’s co-ownership manager were indicted for “involuntary homicides and injuries” and “destruction, degradation or deterioration by the effect of an explosion or a fire “. The judges based their decision on the conclusions of a panel of four experts, mandated to determine the causes of the incident and any faults committed.
“A lack of vigilance” of the city of Paris
In a first report, submitted in December 2019, these experts concluded that a subsidence of the ground, under the sidewalk, in front of the porch of the building located at 6 rue de Trévise, had caused the rupture of a gas pipe, resulting in an accumulation of natural gas causing the explosion. They had identified “shortcomings” of the City’s road service, in particular in the repair of the sidewalk, without incriminating GRDF. In their final report delivered in May 2020, the experts had again pointed out a “lack of vigilance” on the part of the City of Paris and also questioned the building’s co-ownership manager who would have been slow to repair the leak of a collector. of sewage that would have affected land subsidence.
The construction company Fayolle, commissioned in November 2016 to carry out work on the sidewalk, is also singled out by experts. However, she was placed under the intermediary status of assisted witness, less incriminating than that of indictment, while GDRF escaped prosecution.
A second opinion requested
For its part, the City of Paris seized the Paris Court of Appeal after the judges refused to order a second opinion. The hearing is scheduled for January 26. “It does not seem appropriate to close the investigation without the Court of Appeal having ruled on the request for a second opinion. It’s incomprehensible ”, considers Sabrina Goldman, lawyer of the City. “In a case of this magnitude and complexity, it is the minimum that we can have a different opinion and all the more so since it has been shown that the experts” mandated in the criminal proceedings “were wrong”, she added.
The lawyer relies on an expertise ordered in the civil proceedings, carried out in parallel to assess the damage suffered by the victims, who concluded that the state of the pipeline could be in question. A second opinion, “which prevents neither the work on rue de Trévise, nor the compensation which is very well advanced with the framework agreement”, would be according to Sabrina Goldman “decisive” and would only take “a few months”. “Why aren’t the experts working together? It would go faster and it would be more efficient, ”asks Virginie Mallet, whose apartment at number 6 has been blown up.
GRDF “largely absent from the procedures”
The explosion was caused by gas “but GRDF is largely absent from civil and criminal proceedings”, Virginie Mallet is surprised. “We know that gas is a bomb, we have seen it at our expense, and yet it is as if it were something else”.
The City of Paris announced in October that it would add 20 million euros to the compensation fund “without presuming his guilt”. The first compensation can be made once the framework agreement has been signed.