French arm of US chemical giant Lubrizol charged over toxic factory blaze

French prosecutors announced on Thursday they have charged the French subsidiary of US chemicals firm Lubrizol over a massive fire at a factory in northern France that spewed a vast cloud of acrid smoke across the region.

Published: 27 February 2020 17:11 CET

French arm of US chemical giant Lubrizol charged over toxic factory blaze

A huge cloud of toxic black smoke hung over Rouen for several days. Photo: SDIS 6

Lubrizol is owned by American billionaire Warren Buffett. Lubrizol France was charged with pollution and a failure to meet safety standards that resulted in “serious injury to health, security, or substantially degraded wildlife, flora, air, soil or water quality,” the Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Lubrizol France was also ordered to pay a holding amount of €375,000 and further security of €4 million, “to guarantee the rights of victims by allowing for the repair of human and environmental damage that may have been caused”.

The amounts “correspond to the magnitude of the disaster,” said the statement, while adding investigators have not yet established the cause of the fire.

The fire at the toxic chemical plant broke out in the early hours of the morning in September after residents were woken by a series of explosions.

The smoke reached Belgium and the Netherlands. Photo: AFP

The cloud of thick black smoke spewing out of the site of the Lubrizol factory reached as far as Belgium and the Netherlands, with soot deposits found in both countries, according to the Centre de crise de Wallonie (CRC-W).

After battling the blaze for 24 hours firefighters finally managed to bring it under control, but smoke and soot hung over the town and surrounding areas for days, with locals complaining of a noxious smell hanging over the town, causing headaches and nausea.

The soot also affected surrounding farmland and the sale of crops or animal products from 100 districts around Rouen was banned in the immediate aftermath of the blaze.

Oily black soot was seen on crops in nearby fields after the blaze. Photo: AFP

Schools in the town and surrounding areas were also closed as a massive clean-up operation began.

It is not the first time that he factory – which was designated a Seveso site, meaning that there was a high risk from the chemicals it produced – had hit the headlines. In 2013 a gas leak from the same factory created a terrible smell that reached as far as England.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.