Emotion.
This Tuesday morning, two years to the day after the violent gas explosion that killed four people, including two firefighters, and left 66 wounded rue de Trévise (IXth), a hundred residents, elected officials and firefighters gathered in front of the scene of the drama.
The neighborhood still bears the scars of the accident.
After the poignant testimonies of Linda Zaourar, director of the Mercure and Ibis Style hotels on rue de Trévise and president of the VRET (association of victims and survivors of the rue de Trévise) and Dominique Paris, president of Trévise Ensemble (the association disaster), Delphine Bürkli, the mayor (DVD) of the 9th century, in turn spoke to pay tribute to the victims.
An always slow compensation procedure
“I think of all these families and their children shocked and saved for some in extremis, by the firefighters.
They all carry in their hearts, in their souls the invisible but very present stigmata of psychological pain and shock, almost intact twenty-four months later.
I think of all the tourists who stayed in the hotel and who have since lived far from Paris, this personal and collective tragedy.
To all these anonymous people, who have never come forward to us and who have also been marked by this tragedy ”.
The mayor also criticized the slowness of the procedures.
And to continue: "We have already wasted too much time in appraisals, second opinions, in often fruitless legal battles.
This suspended time seems interminable to us, a feeling largely amplified by the Covid-19 crisis which was for all the victims a double penalty: in addition to being chased from their homes, these victims found themselves confined in another home. oneself, without landmarks, without memory, without the warmth of the home, suspended legal proceedings, not to mention the wounded who could not receive treatment, whether psychological or psychological.
"
After the speeches, the ceremony ended with wreath laying in tribute to the victims and a release of doves.
Wounded still traumatized
Zineb Karasane, 78, had been a guard for 30 years at 3 rue Montyon, a building occupied by offices, adjoining the Mercure hotel, came to greet the scene of the tragedy: “When the explosion occurred, I was on my couch.
I was in no rush to have my breakfast.
Fortunately.
Because the table was smashed in two by the bay window which shattered under the effect of the blast.
It wasn't my day.
But I find it difficult to live today ”.
This septuagenarian relocated to the 17th century does not manage to erase from her memory the terrible scenes of January 12, 2019. “I went out in a nightgown.
I didn't feel the cold.
The Spanish tourist who died was lying in a pool of blood.
Her husband had brought her back to the entrance hall.
He was screaming.
I was taken to hospital in shock, ”confides the retiree in a whisper.
The inaction of the City of Paris singled out
“It's a whole life that goes up in smoke.
It's very hard.
I am relocated to a small apartment in the 2nd district where I feel good.
But I hope to find my accommodation quickly but it will probably not be before 2024. It is very long, ”underlines Odile Grandami, 80 years old, lived on the fifth floor of 6 rue de Trévise since 1985.
After the ceremony, the two associations of victims (Treviso Ensemble and VRET) held a press conference to speed up the procedures and compensation.
"Our objective is to ask for concrete actions, in particular from the mayor of Paris, which has not spent a cent to compensate the victims of the most gas accident in Paris for forty years," explained their lawyer, Maître Jonas Haddad.
"The City has chosen a complicated procedure which throws the possibility of rapid compensation into limbo," he criticized.
