The exact causes of the explosion which occurred this Wednesday at 277 rue Saint-Jacques in Paris have not yet been established. Witnesses present at the time of the tragedy, however, relate a “smell of gas” which is a major indication of the origins of the tragedy. Parisians still remember the episode in rue de Trévise, in the 9th arrondissement, where a gas leak left 4 dead and 66 injured in 2019.
Elected officials from the capital had warned at the time about the state of dilapidation of the Parisian gas network. Alexandre Vesperini, then a member of the city’s higher gas control commission in his capacity as elected official (DVD) of the 6th arrondissement, had indicated in Le Parisien that gas is “Paris’s number one problem” in the eyes of the sappers firefighters, as well as “the fear of all borough mayors”. In response to these accusations, the main gas distributor in France GRDF recalled that “the Parisian gas network is subject to permanent surveillance and rigorous control”.
Contacted this Wednesday, Alexandre Vesperini reaffirms his remarks and regrets that his proposals were not “particularly followed”. The former elected demanded at the time that the commission meet more often, and be more transparent on the state of the 2000 km of gas piping. “Pipes made of different materials”, whose origins date back to the end of the 19th century. “Today, there is no open data devoted to the age, quality and safety of the gas network. We need street-by-street mapping,” he says, calling for more transparency for the 500,000 households connected to gas in the capital.
LIVE – Explosion in Paris: four injured in “absolute emergency”, two people wanted in the rubble
Questioned this Wednesday by Le Figaro, the mayor of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, Jean-Pierre Lecoq, confirms that “the gas network is fragile” and that it requires regular maintenance. “There are a lot of Haussmann buildings connected to the city network, tens of thousands of households are affected,” he says. According to the Parisian District Heating Company, 36% of homes in the capital are indeed connected to the gas network. An infrastructure that is, according to several sources, in very different states, from very good to very dilapidated depending on the streets.
Another Parisian specificity, the maintenance of the gas network is largely carried out by GRDF which has a “quasi-exclusive management” in the capital, we explain to the city of Paris. If the city oversees the maintenance of the public network, the condominiums are responsible for the gas pipes inside the buildings. “In my district, almost the entire network has been refurbished, in order to replace the network originally made of bituminized sheet metal by so-called flexible rubber pipes which are no longer at risk of exploding, explains Jean-Pierre Lecoq. But there are the gas pipes inside the building which depend on the syndic of co-ownership and not on the city. Has the building been well maintained?”
