At the end of four hours of indictment, the Evry prosecutor requested a fine of 450,000 euros against the company, the maximum provided for by law. He asked for the relaxation of the SNCF network and the railway worker implicated by the survey.
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It is almost 5 pm when Rodolphe Juy-Burmann, prosecutor of the Republic of Evry, turns to the civil parties, to prevent them: “The sentence pronounced (…) will seem derisory in view of your suffering”, He explains to the victims and relatives of the seven dead, nine injured serious and hundreds of injured derail, on July 12, 2013, of the intercity train number 3657, at the Brétigny-sur-Orge station (Essonne).
“No penalty will bring anyone back to life”, he regrets, before requiring the legal maximum against the SNCF -legal responsible for the SNCF infra subsidiary, then responsible for the maintenance of the tracks – which he has just methodically overwhelmed “disorganization” having led to a “failure in the maintenance chain”, but also the attitude of “contempt for justice”: 450,000 euros fine. A sentence that requires court recognizing that the railway company was in a state of legal recidivism.
“How did we get there?” Asked the prosecutor on several occasions, while he was unwinding, for four hours, the multiple “deficiencies” of the company, which, by “obvious negligence”, n ‘did not detect the crack in the “heart” in time, the device which allowing the crossing of rails. A heart that has never been examined, “he said, sweeping the defense of the company-for whom the catastrophe is due to an undetectable defect in the steel composing the hatch which ceded on July 12. Wear, he argues on the faith of the expertise, “did not occur in one day, we can clearly see the slow degradation of the assembly”. For him, “the only explanation is in the shortcomings in the realization of maintenance”, partly due to the organization of the SNCF in various subsidiaries in search of a reduction in costs, even if it means neglecting the inspections and the Interview.
“Hierarchical chain failure”
methodically taking up the reports of the various inspections and their deficiencies, Rodolphe JUY-BIRMANN castigates the “failure of the completely anesthetized hierarchical channel” of the company, which “does not question itself”. He also evokes the “slow degradation” of the working conditions of railway workers, whose profession is “impacted by the profitability objectives which were imposed on them”, pushing them not to dismantle the device to inspect it, as the nevertheless foresee Protocol, in order to “return the way to traffic faster”. More than a lack of staff, the prosecutor points to an “inadequacy between human needs and maintenance needs”, leading them to poorly conduct the inspections of materials. “We slip because other emergencies take precedence,” he said.
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