This morning of February 4, 1994, at the Rennes Town Hall, the gift given to Édouard Balladur is a curious omen. The Prime Minister receives from the hands of Mayor Edmond Hervé an engraving of the Parliament of Brittany. No one yet knows that this representation will soon no longer conform to reality. After absent-mindedly signing the guestbook, the head of government heads to the prefecture. He must sign the State-Region plan contract.
At the same time, sailors arrived from all over Brittany and even beyond. The seamen have come back up. The year 1993 was catastrophic. Prices have suffered a brutal fall, in a context of frenzied global competition. After having made their angry distress heard in Lorient and Rungis, they intend to warm the ears of the Prime Minister.
Rennes transformed into a battlefield
From 10 a.m., the procession approaches the prefecture. The priority of the security forces is to ensure the protection of the government. Impossible to move forward. The demonstrators fall back towards the historic center, left uncovered. They first head towards the town hall, before stationing themselves on Parliament Square. Around 11 a.m., Béatrice Pierrot ran into the building, the seat of the court of appeal. Daughter of the caretaker, she grew up there, in her mother’s company apartment. She doesn’t know that she’s about to spend her last night there either.
For now, Béatrice, sheltered, observes, through the windows of the palace, the tense face-to-face between the CRS and the sailors on the square. “With my mother, we say to ourselves that something is going to go wrong,” she remembers. The first tear gas responded to the projectile jets. The hostilities will transform Rennes into a battlefield.
Armed with pickaxe handles, distress flares and iron bars, some fishermen go into contact. They are joined during the day by “thugs”. Atmosphere of civil war, witnesses say: streets littered with projectiles, shop gates lowered, fires from barricades… At 4 p.m., when the big raid had ended at the prefecture, Édouard Balladur asked the demonstrators to stop. In total, the day left at least 100 injured, including 77 from the police.
The “forest” is on fire
The calm found in the evening is fleeting. Because another fire is smoldering. Out of sight and away from smoke detectors, the “forest” is consumed. This is the nickname given to the framework of Parliament, which is said to have taken 1,000 oak trees to build. A wood several hundred years old, as flammable as a match. The spark fell from the sky, during the clashes, at the end of a distress flare passed through a slate, the investigation concluded.
Between 11:30 p.m. and 11:40 p.m., the fire alarm went off three times. Mr. Hirel, the other guard of the premises, believes it was an accidental trigger. Lately, the system confuses construction dust with smoke. So, this time too, he turns off the alarm and resets it. The combustion, initially slow and flameless, eventually pierced the roof. The air rushes in and blows on the embers. At 12:30 a.m., passers-by alerted the firefighters. Parliament is on fire.
The fire quickly spread to the entire roof. Under the effect of the heat, the four large statues on the roof grimace and distort. The radiation is so intense that neighbors cannot approach their windows. You can see the flames from miles away. 150 firefighters fight step by step. Above all, prevent the fire from spreading to surrounding buildings. Three of them are injured.
A city almost in mourning
At 5 a.m., Alain-Charles Perrot, the chief architect of historic monuments, arrives from Paris. The firefighters, although masters of the fire, authorized him to enter a building still in flames to designate the works to be saved as a priority. “At that moment, I was unaware of the danger,” he recalls. “I’m going to get two or three paintings, while the fire is still going on in the upper part. »
In the early morning, the embers are still smoking. Parliament was 60% destroyed. The attorney general’s office, the decorated ceiling of the Salle des Pas Perdus, the magistrates’ library… All of this is nothing but ashes. In a mournful silence, the inhabitants parade in their thousands in front of the remains. Brittany has lost one of the symbols of its history.
2024-02-02 20:42:54
#years #Rennes #Parliament #fire
