After the disaster at the Stade de France, for the final Champions League match, on May 28, SNCF and RATP presented themselves to the Senate this Tuesday.

During the hearing, SNCF stated that it hadn’t been alerted to the congestion caused by the large number of supporters of the RER D, which it runs, at Saint-Denis’ stadium gates. Sylvie Charles (Director of Transilien, the SNCF branch responsible for trains departing from Parisian suburbs) stated that there was no alert. She noted that the organizers were informed every half an hour by the RER station at the exit of the stadium’s two RER stations on lines B or D of the number of supporters.

The SNCF accounted for 37,000 people, which is “more than three-times what we normally have” on RER D. On the RER B, 6,200 was “a third of our usual have”. Due to a strike by RATP agents, traffic on the RER B was disrupted. Many supporters reported on line D. The filtering devices at the stadium were also overwhelmed.

Philippe Martin, RATP’s Deputy Director General, noted that an RATP meeting on May 24 had “clearly defined the transport plan (and clearly indicated that we were going forward to postpone some flows from line B towards line D).” He said that an AFP dispatch dated May 26 clearly indicated that RATP invited travelers to use line D as a priority and noted that a “situation update” was made with the French Football Federation on May 27th, the day before the match.

Philippe Martin said that he was also surprised by the statements made by the French Football Federation. Erwan Le Prevost (its director of institutional affairs), had in fact denounced the absence of information from RATP during a hearing in the Senate on June 9. “We could have redesigned the system in the morning if we had access to real-time information about the diversion flows from RER B and RER D,” he said. He said that the prefecture didn’t have the information as well.

Representatives of the RATP, SNCF and SNCF stressed that they were competent at their stations and that there was no major incident in their vicinity despite high attendance. Sylvie Charles reported that there was a fight in Saint-Denis after the match and that there was a stampede in La Plaine-Saint-Denis. There were also pickpockets.

When asked about the CCTV images that were recorded on their networks on May 28th, representatives of both carriers stated that they had not been claimed by the courts until Friday, June 10. It was too late for the RATP who made them disappear after 72 hour as is usual. Jerome Harnois (director in charge of security and risk management) stated that there were “no objective reasons to keep those images” as there was “no notable incidence on our rights-of-way”. security and institutional affairs.

The videos that were taken aboard the trains by the SNCF were destroyed, but most images were kept at the station. According to Sylvie Charles, the head of security PC requested that their destruction be stopped due to the incidents at Saint-Denis stations.