The balcony that collapsed during a housewarming party on October 15, 2016 killed four students and injured fourteen. “I was ashamed of the work of my teams”, recognized Tuesday at the bar the boss of the construction company, recognizing “a serious fault”. “Our fault is truly inexcusable. I cried when I saw how our company had worked”, loose, short of breath, Patrick Bonnel, 72 years old, in front of the correctional court of Angers.
Like him, five defendants are on trial for manslaughter and involuntary injury. “Catch your breath,” advises the president between two questions. “I’m not out of breath, I’m anxious, it’s not the same,” replies the business manager, white hair and black mask. A mask that he often pulls up over his eyes when his co-defendants are questioned.
“We had a malfunction”
At the material time, the family business Bonnel et Cie was working on around thirty sites. On that of the building “Le Surcouf”, built in 1997-1998, “we had a malfunction”, he admits. “The company made a serious mistake, this mistake I absolutely should have seen,” insisted Patrick Bonnel who assures that “it was not at all the way we worked”.
Heard last week, the experts had listed a whole series of poor workmanship in the construction of the balconies, even evoking “a form of DIY”. They had insisted on the reinforced concrete steels “very badly positioned” because “much too low” and on the resumption of concreting between the building and the balcony which had been badly carried out. Over the years, a crack has opened, allowing water to seep in and the steels to degrade. To top it off, the work had been carried out without respecting the plans of the concrete engineer, designed for prefabricated balconies and not for balconies cast on site.
“Unsustainable” deadlines
Tuesday morning, the works manager Éric Morand, 53, explained that the method of construction of the balconies had been modified to meet the deadlines of the site. “On this site, the duration was twelve months, which did not seem tenable to me to implement,” he explained at the helm. However, the customer is “an important promoter”, “a big client” for the company, “who should not be angry”. “I don’t remember an extremely complicated site,” he said. The only tension is in terms of delay. I felt and still feel that the balconies were a blocking point for progress [des travaux]. »
To save time, he therefore suggested pouring the balconies on site, without having the plans modified by the concrete engineer. “The plans were very precise” and “perfectly well drawn and could be adapted to the new method of construction,” he says. It is an adaptation to be made and it must be done in a precise and serious way”. The site manager, an autodidact who stopped school in 6th grade, however said on Monday that he did not know this type of construction, having only worked on prefabricated balconies.
“It is a technique that is not exceptional. It’s a floor leak! exclaims Eric Morand. Pushed to his limits, he ended up recognizing that he should have “requested a modified plan” and checked the reinforcements. “There isn’t a day that I don’t think about the four people who died,” he says. And it’s not because the judgment will be rendered that it will change. The trial is due to end on March 4.
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