Less than a week after the tragedy, two investigating judges were seized to investigate the fire of a lodging in Wintzenheim (Haut-Rhin), where eleven people died on Wednesday August 9, mostly adults in situations of disability who came on vacation.
The judicial information, opened on Monday for “manslaughter and involuntary injuries aggravated by the violation of an obligation of safety or prudence”, should make it possible to establish the cause of the fire, but also the possible criminal or civil responsibilities of the various actors: owner of the gîte, associations, prefecture having granted temporary approval…
The investigators collect in particular the various documents making it possible to verify the conformity – or not – of the accommodation, specified the prosecution.
According to the town hall of Wintzenheim, the gîte had not been declared by its owner. The safety commission had not been asked either, revealed the Colmar public prosecutor’s office, which had opened an initial investigation, before divesting itself in favor of the collective accident division of the Paris public prosecutor’s office, due to the complexity of the affair.
At the same time, social affairs also launched investigations. The results of the general inspection of social affairs are expected “early September”, assured Monday the minister responsible for people with disabilities, Fadila Khattabi.
The two associations had an approval at the time of the tragedy
A total of 28 people were present during the fire of this gîte, an old barn renovated a few years ago. Those who were staying on the ground floor were saved, as well as five people who were staying upstairs. Eleven others perished.
The minister clarified that the two organizations that organized the two trips adapted for disabled people in Wintzenheim “had an approval at the time of the tragedy. One of the two had his extended temporarily.”
An association from Besançon, called Idoine, organized a suitable stay in the gîte located on the ground floor of the old barn. Its members returned to Franche-Comté the very evening of the tragedy, all unscathed.
Oxygène, a company whose head office is located in Lyon, organized the stay on the floors, where ten vacationers and a guide perished. It only had temporary approval, valid during the summer. It had been granted to him at the beginning of July by the prefecture of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The latter told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday that Oxygen had been “approved for many years”. When its certification ended, the association asked for its renewal for five years. “Approval was granted, but only for the summer period, because some documents were missing from the file, which did not arrive on time,” said the prefecture.
“There were no problems with the previous accreditation,” she said. It was also a question of “taking into account an administrative failure, but also the reality of around fifty stays for the disabled, scheduled throughout the territory this summer”.
Asked by AFP, Oxygen’s lawyer, Alain Jakubowicz, declined to comment.
“Gone Too Soon”
The ten disabled holidaymakers who died ranged in age from 23 to 50. Their names were Jennifer, Claude, Jimmy, Jérôme, Marcelle, Laure, Fatima, Jérôme, Régis and Christelle. A guide, born in 1990, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office, also lost his life. The association AEIM (Adults children with mental disabilities) of Meurthe-et-Moselle, which lost four of its residents in the fire, told AFP “to think” about bringing a civil action.
In Amnéville, in Moselle, a mass was celebrated on Sunday for four victims who lived in the department, including Fatima. Her brother modestly described her to AFP as a woman “who loved life, gone too soon”. Registers of condolences will be made available to residents in the municipalities of Meurthe-et-Moselle where the victims came from – Nancy, Saint-Max, Tomblaine, Val-de-Briey – as well as to the departmental council, from Wednesday .
This disaster is the deadliest in France since the fire of a bar in Rouen in 2016, which killed 14 people.
