A thousand people, according to the organizers, 580 according to the police, demonstrated Saturday, September 26 in Rouen to commemorate the first anniversary of the fire at the Lubrizol factory, which deeply marked the inhabitants.
"Lubrizol guilty, state accomplice"
, could one read on the banner of head, which followed many pennants CGT and NPA.
The demonstrators took up this slogan, as did
“Polluter pays, liar state”
.
On a sign, we could also read:
“Je Suie Rouen”
.
Read also: One year after Lubrizol, French chemicals are ready to modernize their sites
Starting from the Lubrizol site on the left bank of the Seine, the procession, in which was the deputy for the environment of the city, Jean-Michel Bérégovoy (EELV), then headed for the city center.
A speech took place in front of the prefecture.
“We have been fighting for justice here for several months.
Industrialists behave in a dangerous and disrespectful manner, ”
said EELV MEP Marie Toussaint.
“A year later, we are not forgetting.
We ask for the truth about pollution.
The State must take its responsibilities ”
, assured Mathilde Panot, deputy France Insoumise.
The demonstration was marked by some tension when members of Extinction Rebellion docked at the Jeanne d'Arc Bridge, a major artery connecting the two banks of the Seine.
The demonstration stopped for a moment and the police took a long time to manage to dislodge the militants, then proceeding to several arrests.
The State and the industrialists have done nothing for a year
Gérald Le Corre, health / work manager at the CGT
Speaking when the procession stopped, Gérald Le Corre, health / work manager at the CGT, expressed the fear of
"a new disaster"
in the Rouen sector which has 13 other Seveso high threshold sites because, he said,
"the State and the industrialists have done nothing for a year"
.
For Paul Poulain, a specialist in industrial risks and who represents the “Notre Maison Brûle” platform,
“the problem today in France is that we lack the means to apply the rules in terms of industrial safety”
.
He also denounces the fact that companies which are not in order
"are not always sanctioned"
.
In a national press release, EELV calls for the creation of an Industrial Safety Authority, like the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), and the strengthening of the control of this type of facility.
"We regret that the lessons of the disaster have not been learned and that the law“ acceleration and simplification of public action (ASAP) ”
(...)
, examined from September 28, amounts to reducing the obligations made to industrialists (...) and to grant too many exemptions from environmental law, ”
EELV wrote.
The Lubrizol fire, which occurred on September 26, 2019 on a site classified as Seveso high threshold, that is to say particularly dangerous, had caused an immense cloud of black smoke 22 km long with fallout of soot in a wide radius.
Nearly 9,505 tonnes of chemicals had burned in this automotive lubricants factory and on the neighboring Normandie Logistique site.
The fire caused no casualties.
