Electric atmosphere at the Evry court: on the seventh day of the Brétigny trial, which seeks to establish responsibilities in the fatal derailment of a train in Brétigny, a battle of experts began on Wednesday with, on the front line, a specialist commissioned by the SNCF.
Heard as a witness, Christian Audurand was commissioned in 2013 by the SNCF to provide an “external” look at the tragedy, which left seven dead and more than 400 injured at the Brétigny-sur-Orge station (Essonne) on July 12, 2013 .
At the helm, this man, born in 1938, vigorously criticizes the work of the other experts.
For example, the BEA-TT, commissioned by the government, described an abnormal dance phenomenon in Brétigny (the dance is a vertical movement of the track, which occurs when the train passes, Editor’s note). This is false, according to Christian Andurand.
“The BEA-TT saw nothing, measured nothing, but spoke of an important dance, which is then taken up by the legal experts”, he regrets. However, if there had been such a dance, the wear observed on the piece of rail would have been “vertical not ho-ri-zon-tale”, he affirms by detaching each syllable.
And the splint in question – a sort of large metal staple joining two rails – should have broken. But this splint has rotated. Its rollover caused the derailment.
To explain this reversal, the expert reports ordered by the courts support a slow process of degradation linked to a “fatigue” rupture of the bolts of the splint as well as the propagation of a crack, combined with faulty monitoring by the agents.
Those mandated by the SNCF support a sudden, undetectable rupture, due to a defect in the steel. Which would clear the company.
The SNCF (criminal heiress of SNCF Infra, in charge of maintenance), the manager of the SNCF Réseau tracks (ex-Réseau Ferré de France) and a railway executive are tried for eight weeks for “involuntary homicides” and “involuntary injuries”.
– “If I sink, you sink” –
The timing of the bolts breaking is important: If they broke due to a slow process, as the investigation argues, officers could have spotted it.
But Christian Andurand maintains that they gave in very shortly before the tragedy. A proof would be the “wear” in the form of “ovalization” at the level of the holes of the splint: this “ovalization” can only be caused “by friction”, but a bolt must be present so that there is friction.
For seven hours, his work is under the fire of questions, even suspicion.
“The feeling is that you are setting a goal and that you are doing everything to demonstrate it”, indignant Gérard Chemla, lawyer for around twenty civil parties, accusing this 84-year-old expert of “brazenly lying”.
It is particularly a question of the amount of time devoted by the railway workers to check the state of certain sections of track. According to Me Chemla, who quotes an SNCF executive, it would have taken 120 hours of checks, but the agents only carried out “a maximum of sixty”.
Mr. Andurand then sought to demonstrate that sixty hours was enough, argues Me Chemla, reading the transcript of a telephone conversation in May 2014.
“We have to manage to get the 65 hours back,” said Mr. Andurand to an SNCF executive who was then wiretapped. “There is one who will be in court, it’s Andurand, you see what I mean, I had better tighten the bolts”, continues the man who often speaks of him in the third person. “We are both on the same boat, if I sink, you sink”.
At the helm, Mr. Andurand vigorously defends himself against any manipulation. In the room, three legal experts react sometimes indignantly, sometimes mockingly.
Mr. Andurand also judged “clear and precise” the statement of the last surveillance tour carried out before the tragedy, while this tour was made with “manifestly insufficient” attention according to the investigating judges.
The SNCF also hired an expert from the Arts et Métiers Amvalor laboratory, who assured on Wednesday that he had worked without being influenced by Mr. Andurand.
And the latter to congratulate himself, still in the third person: “If the laboratory had invalidated my reasoning, well Andurand was a fool, but he confirmed it!”