"It's titanic", agrees an agent, this Tuesday afternoon, faced with the extent of the damage, which explains the interruption of train traffic at Gare de l'Est, all day Tuesday.
In front of him, on the floor, a tangle of cables of all kinds.
On the side, two others patiently arrange portions of optical fibres, "it's like long tangled hair".
Read also Breakdown at Gare de l'Est: traffic will resume on Wednesday, but will still be very disrupted
During the night of Monday to Tuesday, a fire broke out near the railway line near Vaires-sur-Marne.
The alert was given to the Noisiel police station around 4:35 a.m., specifies the Meaux prosecution.
The public prosecutor of Meaux specifies that according to the first elements of the investigation, entrusted to the judicial police of Meaux, "a first box housing electrical cables had been set on fire after two concrete panels condemning access to the hatch where said box was inserted into the ground had been removed and deposited,” he said.
“A second box, located on the other side of the tracks, accessible by means of a tunnel located under the said tracks, had also been damaged by fire”.
A total of 48 cable arteries, or approximately 600 electrical cables, were damaged.
Vaires-sur-Marne, January 24, 2023. About 600 SNCF cables were damaged by an intentional fire, under the railway.
Traffic was halted all day.
The two burned cable chambers are located on either side of a tunnel, above which the trains pass.
Right next to it, a small SNCF building houses a few installations.
But the whole is out of sight, on the edge of the wood of Vaires-sur-Marne and its dense vegetation.
It's hard to come here by chance.
Worse, tires were burned above the cables, as a sign of the perpetrators' determination to set the scene ablaze.
On the other hand, the area is certainly closed by a large gate and protected by a fence and barbed wire.
But it seems easy to those who wish to overcome the obstacle.
Along the railway line, we could even see a portion almost lying down which could have been straddled.
Finally, according to the SNCF, the premises have no CCTV cameras.
These cables are essential.
They are the ones that make it possible to circulate the communications and the electrical supply of the trains, but also of the switching stations, the signalling.
“Without them, the signaling posts no longer receive the quality and safety of the information to be able to circulate the trains safely on the network”, details the SNCF.
The agents will therefore have to change the sheaths and the hundreds of cables manually and check night after night, which circulation can be restored.
"We're going to be here at least all night.
For once, it's not raining,” quips one of the agents.
During the day, the investigation was entrusted to the PJ by the Meaux prosecution.
All tracks remained open as to the identity of the authors of this “sabotage”.
