Fourteen people were injured, two of them seriously, by an ammonia leak, which took place on Wednesday at a fertilizer production site classified as "Seveso threshold high", in Ambès, north of Bordeaux, according to the prefecture of Gironde. .
The leak occurred at 9:45 a.m. at the Yara company site while loading a truck with liquid ammonia.
This Yara fertilizer producer is authorized to store up to 68,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate on its Girondin site It was this substance which led to the deadly double explosion which destroyed part of Beirut, Lebanon, in August 2020..
“Although the quantities of ammonia that leaked were limited (…), the cloud of ammonia vapor that formed caused 14 injuries, including 2 serious injuries, all working inside the site” , again according to the prefecture.
The mayor of the town, Kévin Subrenat told France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine that one of the two is "in critical condition".
One injured was evacuated by helicopter to an establishment of the Bordeaux University Hospital and the 13 others transported by firefighters to emergency services, the prefecture said.
Ongoing investigations
Yara employees and those of a neighboring company were "confined as a precaution" but the measurements carried out 30 minutes after the accident "did not detect ammonia".
Labor inspectors and classified installations were to continue the investigations on Wednesday afternoon to determine the circumstances of the incident.
At the end of September 2020, on the initiative of the collective “Our house is burning but we will not look elsewhere”, around fifty people gathered in front of the Yara factory to warn of the danger posed by this site.
#NotreMaisonBrule In Ambès (#Bordeaux) around fifty people braved the rain and cold to demand transparency and popular democracy in the management of ICPEs.
The Yara factory, Seveso III, produces fertilizers from ammonium nitrate.
2000 t stored.
pic.twitter.com/4tbUtVuBvk
– APHG (@AlertePesticide) September 26, 2020
They demanded transparent management even if the storage conditions are much more draconian than in Beirut, according to France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
The collective was also worried about "the presence of a dozen installations classified at the same level of risk on the tip of Ambès".