LILLE. A building housing two adjoining three-storey buildings suddenly collapsed on the morning of Saturday November 12, 2022 in Lille. No casualties are to be deplored for the moment, and the cause of the collapse is still unknown.
[Mis à jour le 12 novembre 2022 à 14h15] A building made up of two adjoining three-storey buildings suddenly collapsed around 9:15 a.m. this Saturday, November 12, 2022, in the heart of downtown Lille. The building was located between numbers 40 and 44 rue Pierre-Mauroy, just a few meters from the Lille Grand-Place, an emblematic place in the northern city. At midday, no casualties were reported, according to information from The voice of the North. The area is cordoned off, and traffic has been banned on the street where the building collapsed. The cause of the collapse is currently unknown.
On the night of Friday November 11 to Saturday November 12, a young man gave the alert when he returned home around 3 a.m., because one of the two buildings showed signs of instability. A first intervention then took place, and the occupants of the building were evacuated. Following the collapse in the morning, only an elderly man, who lived in a dwelling located at the back of the buildings, was found by the emergency services safe and sound. The mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, indicated that in the other building, which was dragged down by the fall of the first, there was a family which was fortunately not present that night, since it was on the coast. In the morning, neighboring buildings were evacuated as a precaution. In the area where the collapse took place, some businesses and homes are without power this Saturday.
The firefighters are still doing reconnaissance in the rubble of the building which collapsed this morning rue Pierre Mauroy in Lille pic.twitter.com/GannxUfS2h
— France Bleu Nord (@fbleunord) November 12, 2022
An alert that saved lives?
The mayor of Lille, who visited the scene, said: “We were informed by a young man who was coming home at 3 a.m., and who realized that the door was open and the wall was strangely askew. The firefighters and the municipal police arrived immediately, and we issued a danger order.” “I’m still shaking because if that night, this gentleman hadn’t come home at 3 a.m., and hadn’t contacted us, and we hadn’t had these reactions, there would have been deaths this ( Saturday) morning obviously”, she added, according to remarks reported by 20 minutes. “We owe him a proud candle”, concluded the mayor of Lille, while thanking the firefighters and municipal police for their responsiveness. In a tweet, Martine Aubry also welcomed the reaction of the young man who warned the emergency services overnight.
A building collapsed causing the neighboring building. Thanks to the speed of a young tenant from 3 a.m., the municipal police and firefighters intervened to evacuate the building and the City issued an order of imminent danger.
— Martine Aubry (@MartineAubry) November 12, 2022
What is the cause of the collapse?
According The voice of the North, the Minister 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 one of the two buildings was under construction, but we do not know for the moment what type of work it was. 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.