An Orpea logo, during the group’s general meeting in Paris, July 28, 2022 (AFP / JULIEN DE ROSA)
The trial of Orpea and the ex-mayor of Biot (Alpes-Maritimes) for the drowning of three residents of a nursing home, in devastating floods in 2015, recalled on Tuesday the chaos on the evening of the tragedy and highlighted the shortcomings calls for prevention.
“We’ve been waiting for this for eight years. My grandmother was doing very well, she suffered an agonizing death,” Sandrine Delaup, civil party, explained to AFP. “They are all passing the buck but there has been total inaction and they need to recognize that.”
Former mayor Guilaine Debras as well as the city’s natural risks manager Yann Pastierik, the former director of the private nursing home Anaïs Gledel and the Orpea group are appearing for involuntary manslaughter before the Grasse criminal court.
They risk five years of imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros, not counting civil damages to be paid. Ms. Gledel and Orpea are also being prosecuted for endangering the lives of others for the ordeal of the residents who survived.
On the evening of October 3, 2015, catastrophic storms transformed several rivers on the Côte d’Azur into torrents of water and mud, causing the death of 20 people and considerable damage.
In Biot, a hilly town of nearly 10,000 inhabitants north of Antibes, a wave of flooding devastated several neighborhoods and invaded the ground floor of the Clos Saint-Grégoire retirement home, at the foot of the medieval village. The establishment, already affected by two floods but bought by Orpea in 2011, is now closed.
In their testimony read at the hearing, the nursing assistant and the carer present that evening recounted how they themselves had been swept away by the wave. Escaped through a window, they swam in the dark, screaming for help into the void, until they painfully returned to the first floor.
Communications were impossible and the streets impassable. With the help of two firefighters who arrived on foot, they came down, waist-deep in water, to help the residents.
– Beds that floated –
Some were lying on their floating beds, others were standing in the swirling, muddy water. But it was too late for Marguerite Giunipero, 94 years old, Jacqueline Colombier, 91 years old and Josiane Chaix, 82 years old.
Their lives would have been saved if the residents had all been taken to the first floor as a precaution. Moving 21 dependent and not necessarily cooperative people in this way is delicate, but the measure was taken at the last minute during a previous flood in 2005, and already once as a preventative measure in 2011.
To determine why this was not done that evening, the court began to examine on Tuesday what was known at the time about the risks for the municipality and for the nursing home, what procedures were in place and how the defendants handled the crisis.
The task was complicated by the often evasive statements of the defendants. The prize goes to the representative of Orpea who was not in charge of the region at the time of the events and provided almost no response.
That day, Météo France had placed the department on “orange” vigilance with a risk of thunderstorms potentially accompanied by waves of water. But the municipality did not activate its Municipal Protection Plan (PCS) in advance, which provided in particular for warning residents of flood-prone areas.
“At the time, orange alert meant that we saw it coming, because 90% of the orange alerts in the department had no impact in Biot,” assured Mr. Pastierik, who left that evening at a football match.
Both the municipality and Ephad relied on retention basins, dug after the floods of 2005. “My colleagues just told me: we close the anti-flood doors and in any case, with the basins we are protected”, said explained Ms. Gledel, then in office for a month.
But these pools filled in less than a quarter of an hour and their overflow accentuated the effect of sudden chaos around 9:30 p.m.
The trial must continue on Wednesday with the study of the concrete management of the evening of the tragedy. The civil parties and the prosecution must speak on Thursday, before the defense pleadings on Friday. The judgment should be reserved.