An Orpea logo, during the group’s general meeting in Paris, July 28, 2022 (AFP / JULIEN DE ROSA)
The trial of the former mayor of Biot (Alpes-Maritimes) and Orpea for the drowning of three residents of a private group retirement home in floods in 2015 opened this Tuesday, in the presence of the defendants, before the Grasse criminal court.
“We’ve been waiting for this for eight years. My grandmother was doing very well, she suffered an agonizing death, in terrible conditions. We can’t let this happen without saying anything. They’re all passing the buck, but he there was total inaction and they must recognize it,” Sandrine Delaup, civil party, whose 91-year-old grandmother, who raised her after the death of her parents, testified to AFP. drowned during these floods.
The former mayor, Guilaine Debras, as well as the city’s natural risks manager, Yann Pastierik, the former director of the nursing home, Anaïs Gledel, and the Orpea group must answer for involuntary homicide by clearly deliberate violation of an obligation of safety or prudence, an offense punishable by five years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros, not including civil damages.
Ms. Gledel and Orpea are also being prosecuted for endangering the lives of others – punishable by one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros – for the ordeal of the residents who survived the waves.
On the evening of October 3, 2015, violent storms accompanied by exceptional rainfall transformed several rivers around Cannes and Antibes, on the Côte d’Azur, into torrents of water and mud which caused the death of 20 people and others. considerable damage.
In Biot, a wave of submersion invaded the ground floor of the Clos Saint-Grégoire retirement home, at the foot of this medieval town of 9,800 inhabitants. Marguerite Giunipero, 94 years old, Jacqueline Colombier, 91 years old and Josiane Chaix, 82 years old, drowned in 1.25 meters of water.
It would have been enough to bring all the residents up to the first floor as a precaution so that lives would have been spared.
That day, Météo France had placed the department on “orange” vigilance due to a risk of storm – for the third time of the year -, but Biot did not follow the protocol of its Plan municipal protection (PCS), which planned in particular to warn threatened residents.
– Awareness of danger faded –
No on-call system was in place and the city’s natural risks manager left to attend a football match in Nice in the evening. Even though the alert had been given, the equipment was faulty: two of the municipality’s four sirens did not work.
Located near a rainwater drainage channel, the retirement home was known to be particularly vulnerable. The establishment, now closed, had already suffered two floods and the last one in 2005 forced the staff to urgently bring all the residents up to the first floor.
But since then, the retirement home had been equipped with anti-flood doors, the municipality had dug retention basins upstream and awareness of the danger had faded, particularly after the purchase of the establishment by Orpea in 2011. The doors were malfunctioning and the maintenance of the pools was questionable.
On the evening of October 3, 2015, the director, aged 29, had been in office for a month. There was only one caregiver and one life assistant on site, who were neither trained in the risk of flooding nor warned of the danger.
When they saw the water seeping in, communications were cut. They tried to evacuate the residents on the ground floor but were themselves swept by the wave into the first bedroom.
The trial is scheduled to last four days, with the indictment scheduled for Thursday and defense arguments on Friday. The judgment should be reserved.
Orpea, which has retirement homes and specialized clinics, is present in around twenty countries, employs more than 76,000 people and welcomes more than 267,000 patients and residents each year.
He has been very shaken for two years by the scandal arising from the practices of his former management, suspected of mistreatment, revealed by Victor Castanet’s investigative book, “Les Fossoyeurs”.