She was housekeeper at the Relais Bleu, the hotel next to the Hotellissimo on which the Concorde crashed, in Gonesse, on July 25, 2000. Twenty years later, after seeing the supersonic crash in flame next to her , Lucyna Duriez copes as best she can with this crash which left 113 dead.
“I remember every detail. I see it as in a movie, ”says Lucyna, 55, mother of two children. “First, it was the noise that appealed to me. It was like bombs falling in a war movie. It was shrill, it still whistles in my ears, I will never forget it. "
A lump in my stomach every July
Busy storing bottles in a hangar adjacent to the hotel, she fled when she discovered the Concorde on the hotel, before it exploded. An hour and a half later, her boss shows her the place where she was, which is completely burnt. She understands that she is a survivor and will remain so. “In the hotelissimo, there were Polish trainees who were the age of my first son. They were to return home a few days later, ”she says twenty years later.
This Saturday, anniversary of the crash, Lucyna will join the Gonesse hospital and its psychiatry department where she works as a service agent, with patients "a little forgotten during confinement". With that lump in her stomach that never leaves her every July. “I only recently understood why I always had a health problem in July for several years. It is the body that reacts. He hasn't forgotten. "
This period is a test. “I am stressed, anxious. I no longer sleep or very badly. I have nightmares. I am also loathsome to everyone. I apologize in advance at work by telling my colleagues not to take it badly, that it will pass. After the month of July, things calm down. But it is engraved until death. "
Recognized as a victim after ten years of proceedings
After ten years of proceedings the Court of Appeal recognized in November 2012 her status as a victim, considering that she had "suffered a significant psychological trauma". The court had noted "a state of serious post-traumatic stress, which was complicated by a major depressive episode and a phobia of movement". Disorders having caused "a major impact on the personal life and on the professional activity of Lucyna Duriez", who remained in total 4 years on sick leave.
Determined to fight her phobia, she took the plane once to see her first son who lives in Tanzania. “I was accompanied by my other son who held my hand like a mother holds her child. The plane was an hour late, then three, four… When we finally board, the hostess explains that the engineers couldn't find the failure, that the second planned plane had been struck down… What a fear! The doors were closed, I couldn't go out. I also only took the car back a year and a half ago. But the Clio acquired with the Concorde money never ceases to have problems. “I tell myself it's because I bought it with the money from the misfortune. "
"If we stay alone, we sink"
Since the accident, Lucyna, who lost her husband three and a half years ago, avoids noise and crowds, takes refuge in her vegetable patch and garden, in Le Thillay, a few kilometers from the crash site. “I like to isolate myself there, quiet… It's my Temesta. She also says she talked a lot about the crash with her colleagues at the hospital. “We help each other a lot. If we stay alone, we sink. What she fights: "I have a courageous and sensitive son who helps me a lot. We are going forward. When I make plans, it doesn't work. So I live from day to day. The Concorde crash changed me. It transformed me. I no longer have the same outlook on life. I no longer care about material things. Nobody takes anything in their coffin! Better to help people. I'm trying to do it. "
His former boss, who ran the Relais Bleues hotel, assures him that he was able to turn the page over time, to have left behind the depression into which he had plunged the crash, the certainty of living his last seconds. On July 25, 2000, he was in his office when through the window he saw the burning supersonic crash into him, eventually crashing right next to it. “The aftermath of this drama, frankly, has faded. I don't think about it anymore. "
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Despite everything, he still has the feeling of an unsuccessful trial. “I have always had the certainty that Air France, the government, had not done their job, that they had not intervened when necessary for the Concorde, given the incidents which had preceded the crash. "He refers to the previous tire bursts which caused holes in the tanks, notably in Washington, in 1979." But the trial did not identify these people as being responsible for the crash. The responsibility is truncated. So there. "