It is often ugly, a factory chimney. A top pipe made of concrete grey that is stuttering a smoke of a color questionable. But we eventually hooked on it. A Petit-Couronne (Seine-Maritime), in the suburbs of Rouen, one of the former refinery, Petroplus has nothing sumptuous, especially since no plume exits and at the top, the red stripes and the white began to fade. For locals, however, this tower is 170 meters, remains a totem, a beacon that will mark from the highway or the river Seine.
“Arriving near the plant, we knew, just by seeing the fireplace, if the installation went well and if it would be a quarter difficult or not, remembers Nicolas Vincent, a former employee. Even today, we often have the reflex to look at it, even though we know everything is stopped… The day where it will be destroyed, it will make me feel super bad. “
The maturity approach. Even a few weeks, a few months, and it will disappear in a cloud of dust as the other six fireplaces of the site, a little smaller. On-site, approximately half of the facilities had already been razed to the ground. Remain huge bins rusted, miles of pipes, whole units of oil-processing workers to shear with the help of clamps and hydraulic excavators…
Symbol of the industrial past
Every day, trucks are evacuating more than 50 tons of scrap metal, sold it to the recyclers. In another area, a team removed the heavy plates of asbestos that insulated a distillation system. It is the largest site of its kind in France.
Has Reichstett, Alsace, france, where another refinery, Petroplus is in the process of being removed from the landscape, the promoters have decided to keep one of the three chimneys as a symbol of the industrial past. “Here, we’re all going to the” rock “, announces Christian Musitelli, one of the leaders of the construction site norman, who summed up his RESUME in one sentence : “I spent thirty-seven years…
