The Minister Delegate for Housing announced on Monday a study mission which will be entrusted to a public body to seek the causes of the collapse on Saturday of two buildings in the center of Lille, reaffirming that insalubrity was not in question in this tragedy which caused one death.
With the mayor of Lille and the prefect, we would like to have in-depth work in addition to legal expertise and we are going to entrust a study mission to try to deepen the causes and above all to be sure that this type of accident cannot reproduce here or elsewhere, said Olivier Klein in a press briefing in front of the rubble left by the collapse.
Mr. Klein indicated that this mission would probably be entrusted to the Scientific and Technical Center for Building (CSTB).
It is a tragedy because a person died but it could have been much worse, underlined the minister. We are not in a known and recognized unsanitary housing area as we can know it elsewhere, he insisted, welcoming Lille’s extremely competent health inspectors.
By collapsing on Saturday around 9:15 a.m., a building on this shopping street near the Grand’Place, caused the collapse of an adjoining building, in which the victim was.
According to the Calais hospital center, it is Alexandre Klein, 45, head of the mental health and addictology unit. But if it is highly likely that the body found is that of this doctor, he had not yet been formally identified Monday morning, said the prosecution.
A student residing in the first building had, with two other inhabitants, alerted the emergency services on the night of Friday Saturday, allowing the evacuation of the inhabitants, after noticing that his building had moved.
There was no harbinger (of collapse) on the other building, said Olivier Klein on Monday.
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If there had been danger, we would have taken a danger stop. We already salute that the firefighters reacted so early in the night and asked us to take this danger stop immediately for building number 44 and to evacuate it, added the socialist mayor of Lille Martine Aubry.
No one thought it was going to fall apart so quickly, she insisted.
According to her, the scaffolding located on the 18th century building was going to be dismantled, following work on the windows and the facade.
Mr. Klein hailed the foresight of the three students who sounded the alarm.