2023-04-19 15:00:19
The imposing red truck which, for five days, served as a rescue command post and attracted all the cameras, is no longer there. The articulated crane which gently removed the rubble hoping to save potential survivors gave way to a clearing machine. At the corners of the streets, tribute banners bear the names of the eight victims of 17, rue de Tivoli and messages of thanks to the marine firefighters. Ten days after the explosion and collapse of two buildings, number 17 followed by 15, on the night of Saturday April 8 to Sunday April 9, the Camas district, in the center of Marseille, bears the scars of the tragedy.
“Here, it’s a neighborhood where life is good, with a mixed population of former Marseillais from working-class backgrounds and new arrivals who appreciate the atmosphere. It will take time to find the paths that will allow this family to regain its normality. The trauma is not going away anytime soon”, already predicts the mayor of the sector, Didier Jau, member of Printemps Marseille, the left-wing coalition, environmentalist and citizen who pilots the city. A year earlier, the chosen one lived in this quadrilateral of streets with well-maintained buildings, between the top of the Canebière, the place Jean-Jaurès, which everyone calls “La Plaine”, and the boulevard Eugène-Pierre. A historic bastion of the right in full social change, which, in 2020, triumphantly elected the environmental candidate Michèle Rubirola.
In the hours following the tragedy, 302 people, including 55 minors, were evacuated between rue Abbé-de-l’Epée, rue de Tivoli and rue Jaubert. Ten days later, 42 buildings and one detached house remain affected by the security perimeter. An area under police surveillance, designed to facilitate the work of the emergency services, to allow the verification of the structures of the buildings potentially altered by the explosion, and to avoid what an elected official calls the “voyeurism” on the site of the drama.
Friday April 14, at the end of the municipal council during which a long tribute to the victims was paid, the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan (various left), spoke of his desire to push the State to release a fund as soon as possible. compensation for victims. But he also warned that the gradual return of evacuees should wait for the security of buildings and networks. “And for some buildings close to the explosion, it will take time”, he predicted.
Psychological assistance
“When the firefighters and the journalists left, we said to ourselves that it was over and that we were going to go home… We had a hard time understanding that it was going to last”, slips Grégoire Bernardi, evacuated on Sunday 9. Like two thirds of the displaced persons, this photographer has found temporary accommodation with friends. Tuesday, April 18, only 90 people, including 12 minors, were housed by the municipality in a hotel or rental apartment. A drop of water compared to the tidal wave of 3,500 evacuees caused by the disaster in the rue d’Aubagne and its aftermath in November 2018.
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