ROUEN, France — After the chemical factory fire, the few who ventured out
clutched their noses or covered their faces in handkerchiefs. Soot fell in
towns dozens of miles away, farmers dumped thousands of gallons of milk,
harvesting was banned, schools closed and residents moved out.
More than a month after the giant Sept. 26 blaze, the flames have long
been extinguished, but the fear is not. For France, the Lubrizol factory
fire in Rouen, Normandy’s ancient river-port capital 80 miles from Paris,
has become the disaster that won’t die.
In fact, it has come to epitomize environmental anguish in the age of fear
for the planet. The disaster has tapped into a deep mistrust of the government
— already chronic in France — anger at corporations and unease over the environment.
There have been parliamentary inquiry commissions and a criminal investigation.
The American chief executive of Lubrizol — a major chemicals company owned by
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — has been summoned to testify at the National
Assembly in Paris.
President Emmanuel Macron himself has toured the streets of half-timbered houses to
comfort citizens, and the inhabitants have continued to mobilize in front of Rouen’s
ornate, 15th-century courts downtown.
In Paris, Eric Schnur, Lubrizol’s chief executive, tried to be reassuring, telling
the French senate that there wasn’t much difference between the Lubrizol fire and
“what you might find in a fire, for instance, in a house.”
It didn’t work.
More than nine tons of chemicals used for engine oil and industrial lubricant additives
went up into the air that night, and the smoke plume stretched 13 miles. Many reported
coughing, headaches, sore throats and runny noses.
Lubrizol has promised to help out farmers — some 3,000 were potentially affected — shops,
and the local tourist industry. This past week, the government announced the first indemnity
payments to farmers.
But the fears of the inhabitants here have not gone away.
How much is real, and how much imagined? Where is the line between paranoia and justified
anxiety? The Rouen disaster has tested those limits.
The government has promised an epidemiological study in the spring. That is not soon enough
for many still living in anxiety in Rouen.
“They close the windows. They’re afraid to breathe,” said Martine Fleury, a psychiatrist
who took part in a recent demonstration.
The demonstration was against the government, against Lubrizol, against the local prefect,
and against whatever else was deemed responsible. Hundreds of citizens turned out for it on
a warm Saturday afternoon.
“There are people who are living completely barricaded,” said Dr. Fleury’s friend Nathalie Le Meur,
a pharmacist and biologist.
An organizer’s voice boomed out angrily over a microphone, filling downtown Rouen: “They’re just
telling us, ‘Move on, get over it!’ We want the numbers on the hospitalizations!”
Inscribed on a bus shelter were the words “Our past stinks of Lubrizol, our future
smells like cancer.”