After the collapse of a building on rue Saint-Rome in Toulouse during the night from Friday to Saturday, others were evacuated in this hyper city center. Responsibilities are shared, believes a Toulouse expert invited to the Toulouse quarter of an hour.
Dominique Boussuge is an expert in building pathology, president of the International Institute of Experts and a teacher at Toulouse 1 Capitole University. She reacts to the collapse of a building on rue Saint-Rome which occurred Friday evening. Miraculously, there were no injuries.
France Bleu Occitanie: Is the city of Toulouse collapsing?
Dominique Boussuge: Toulouse and all city centers in France are suffering from the dilapidation of buildings and the lack of recognition of this risk of collapse.
The Haute-Garonne owners’ association announced, on France Bleu Occitanie a few days ago, that 4,000 homes in Toulouse were at risk and degraded. Do you confirm this figure?
Yes, there are a lot of them in Toulouse since it is a city that was built in the 18th and 19th centuries, like many cities in France.
Do you think that the town hall and the State do not measure the risks they pose to residents?
These are private homes so the town hall cannot visit each building to check the condition. On the other hand, the State has a responsibility because there is no diagnosis of the structures that currently exist in France. We are focused on the DPE (energy performance diagnosis) and we forget the structure. There is a bill which was presented to the Assembly which aims to establish the obligatory structural diagnosis of collective buildings built more than fifty years ago.
Isn’t a mayor responsible for the safety of his residents?
Yes, he is the first police force in his city but the town hall cannot enter every private building to control the state. And you have to be trained in pathology, trained in the risks of collapse.
Who is the expert who came to rue Saint-Rome after the collapse of the first wall?
From what I heard, a month before this collapse an expert architect had come to assess this building following reports from tenants. He passed by, I think, […] an architect is not trained in the pathology of a building […] For me, any pathology expert who came by would have requested urgent procedures be secured right away. But I haven’t seen his report.
Some buildings near the one that collapsed were evacuated, but not all. Is this normal?
I wouldn’t take the risk of leaving rue des Puits-Clos and rue Peyras open until all the buildings have been inspected. I am convinced that there are many cracks inside all these very aging buildings.
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2024-03-11 10:30:06
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