Rue de Trévise: the managing agent did not judge the emergency urgent enough

According to Le Monde, former employees of the managing agent Cipa were heard as witnesses on Thursday at the Paris judicial court, in the trial over the explosion on rue de Trévise in January 2019. At the heart of the questions: the company did not use the emergency procedure that would have allowed it to have leaks repaired, and those leaks played a crucial role in the disaster. People lost their lives there, and we write with that gravity in mind.

What we do not yet know, from the wire report: exactly what each witness answered, nor why the emergency procedure was set aside. The court is there to establish that, and individual responsibilities belong to it. What follows is our reading, not a established fact.

Let us look at the question the hearing raises: what is an emergency? For a family, it is simple. A leak is the night you put a bucket down, call someone, rewrite an email for the fourth time. It is domestic time, anxiety, vigilance, rarely paid. For a building manager, an emergency is also an administrative category, with a cost, approvals to obtain, a budget to justify. Between the two definitions lies a whole floor of paperwork, and people sleeping beneath it.

This is where the notion of social reproduction helps us. The home is where one rests, cooks, raises children, which is to say where the country's labour force is made again each morning. When upkeep of the building is treated as a line of expenditure to be squeezed, the risk does not disappear: it is passed on to residents, who must watch, chase up, worry. It is often women who hold this role of household watchkeeper, without anyone writing it down anywhere.

There is also the logic of rent. In a system where the building is first an asset and the dwelling a source of income, the interest of the person living under the roof weighs little against the accounting arbitrage of those who manage or own it. The syndic is an intermediary: it arbitrates between owners who pay and occupants who suffer. This structurally uncomfortable position encourages waiting, stalling, avoiding disturbing the co-ownership with spending.

One can add the work of those who manage, the employees of these firms. Thursday's witnesses are former staff: people with overdue files, overloaded portfolios, instructions. The trial will say what was the case here. But the question deserves to be put to the whole chain: who decides that a leak can wait, and who bears the consequences?

An emergency procedure that is not used is a tool in a drawer. The drawer, for its part, was firmly shut. That the courts seek those responsible is their job. Ours is to remind that a building that explodes also tells us how, every day, we treat the housing of those who have no choice but to stay.