LILLE. On the morning of Saturday November 12, 2022, a building housing two adjoining three-storey buildings collapsed in Lille. A doctor is actively sought in the rubble, while another person was slightly injured. The cause of the tragedy is still unknown.
[Mis à jour le 12 novembre 2022 à 20h01] The firefighters continue their search in Lille, after the collapse of a building composed of two adjoining three-storey buildings around 9:15 a.m., this Saturday, November 12, 2022. If, in the morning, several political figures were delighted that no death Unfortunately, it seems that the situation could unfortunately change in the next few hours, since a doctor could have been present in one of the two buildings when the collapse took place. “His phone does not answer, but terminal in the area of the collapse, his car is still in the parking lot, this person was to be on call today and did not take his call”, explained a firefighter to The voice of the North.
“We are almost certain that this person is in the rubble,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Stéphane Beauventre daily, which specifies that a dozen firefighters are currently looking for the doctor missing in the rubble. Perilous research, since many objects lean dangerously into the void. They could still last for long hours, especially since nightfall complicates the work of the firefighters. Lighting must be installed, and a dog from the canine unit is also present on site. Firefighters also said another victim was pulled out of the rubble. Fortunately, she was only slightly injured according to the emergency services.
The building housing the two buildings that collapsed was located between numbers 40 and 44 rue Pierre-Mauroy, in the heart of downtown Lille. Indeed, just a few meters away is the Grand’Place, an emblematic place of the northern city. The area has been cordoned off, and the street where the collapse took place is closed to traffic. It was Thibault Lemay, a 22-year-old student, who gave the emergency alert on returning home to one of the two collapsed buildings last night around 3 a.m. Information reported by France Blue North. He saw when he arrived that the wall of the hall of the building was ajar and warped, and decided to warn the municipal police and the firefighters, who then evacuated one of the two buildings in which the inhabitants were. Benjamin Lopard, one of the student’s neighbours, was thus awakened by the firefighters, who ordered him to leave the premises. As he descended into the lobby of his building, he took photos of the warped wall which you can find below:
The Mayor of Lille Martine Aubry and the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin both thanked Thibault Lemay for having had this reflex. Martine Aubry clarified that an “imminent danger order” had been taken. The cause of the collapse is currently unknown. The Lille prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation for “endangering the lives of others”. “A judicial expertise has been commissioned to shed light on this case,” said the prosecution.
An alert that saved lives?
Thibault Lemay, a 22-year-old work-study student in industrial computing, gave the alert to the emergency services. He told to France Blue North how he noticed, on returning home on the night of Friday November 11 to Saturday November 12 around 3 a.m., that the wall of the building’s lobby was ajar and warped. “I’m going to see my two roommates, we realize that the building has moved, because we could no longer open the door at the top and we heard rubble falling”, explained Thibault Lemay to our colleagues. The three roommates then made the decision to notify the emergency services. The 22-year-old student says that the firefighters arrived ten minutes later, and that they evacuated the people present in one of the two buildings “in less than 30 minutes”.
Before we learned that a doctor was missing and could be in the rubble, the mayor of Lille Martine Aubry praised the responsiveness of Thibault Lemay: “I’m still shaking because if this night, this gentleman had not returned at 3 a.m., and had not joined us, and that we had not had these reactions, there would be deaths this (Saturday) morning obviously. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also thanked “the student who sounded the alarm last night”.
What is the cause of the collapse?
According The voice of the North, the Minister Delegate for Housing, Olivier Klein, declared that “there was no particular alert on this building, it was not a building affected by insalubrity”. We know, however, that a facelift was underway on one of the two buildings, according to information from France Blue North. Jean-Yves Méreau, Lille heritage and town planning specialist, was interviewed by The voice of the North on this collapse: “I do not know in this specific case what work has been carried out, but there is a real problem of destructuring of plots in Old Lille (building district). We too often remove load-bearing walls to enlarge commercial surfaces. However, in Lille, the facades do not support the buildings.” “This creates a load-bearing problem because the loads are returned to points that are too weak and, afterwards, the walls creak. The services of the city of Lille have been fighting against this mania of removing load-bearing walls for years”, a- he added.
The voice of the North also interviewed Marc Dumont, a teacher in town planning at the University of Lille. “There’s a fair amount of run-down buildings in the city,” he said. In the afternoon of Saturday, the Lille prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened an investigation for “endangering the lives of others”, adding that a “judicial expertise has been commissioned to shed light on this case” . Olivier Klein, Minister Delegate for Housing, announced on BFM TV that he was going to Lille, tomorrow or Monday. “We can hold work meetings and see if we have other buildings in danger, launch the necessary investigations and try, with the mayor and the prefect, to be useful and to understand what happened for prevent such a tragedy from happening again,” he said.