Around 3:30 pm, a fire broke out on a 10-m³ pile of rubber under a manual sorting belt within a centre for metal recovery and pollution cleanup of the destruction of end-of-life vehicles, causing a plume of black smoke. The centre’s personnel activated the fire alarm. The site’s intervention squad made use of a loader in order to remove and spread the rubber stockpile over a free-standing concrete slab and proceeded by extinguishing the fire with nozzles. Local fire-fighters arrived around 3:50 pm, but their services were not required.

The extinction water should have been retained by the site’s retention facilities, but instead the sectional valve on the collection network for wastewater prone to pollution was not closed during the intervention: extinction water was therefore discharged into the buffer tank on the industrial zone’s stormwater drainage system. This basin, which definitely contained sufficient capacity, allowed avoiding any overflow of extinction water into the wastewater collection network. The fire residue was discharged at an appropriate burial site.

The Classified Facilities Inspectorate visited the site at 6 pm; moreover, the chief inspector requested instituting a procedure and deploying the technical resources to ensure the retention of extinction water in the event of fire.