It was a tired and affected mayor who spoke on Wednesday. In the afternoon, Raphaël Cognet, the mayor (DVD) of Mantes-la-Jolie, appealed for calm after the violent incidents of the previous night during which the town hall annex of Val-Fourré went up in smoke. "Everyone needs to make sure teens stay home tonight. Everyone has a role to play in bringing calm back," he said in a serious tone.
The elected official spent much of the night in the heart of the sensitive district, helplessly witnessing the destruction of the building. The services it hosted, such as the civil registry, will be transferred to the town hall of Gassicourt and the main town hall. But disruptions are to be feared due to the damage to the computer network.
The annex town hall cannot be rebuilt
A small miracle, however, on this nightmarish night: the passports of the inhabitants were found intact, in the middle of the rubble, protected by the chest in which they were stored. For the rest, it is a disaster: the annex town hall is too fragile to be rebuilt and the local mission, installed on site, will probably not reopen.
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Raphaël Cognet seemed even more affected when he evoked, as an aside, the fate of the gym recently renovated after years of closure. "We were supposed to open it on September 30 and it was supposed to welcome children this summer. We had just received the material. It was really something beautiful," he says, moved. An equipment that had cost almost 500,000 euros to the finances of the city.