The skies had cleared by late afternoon, but the weak autumn sun that gradually replaced the driving rain did little to lift the mood of the people of St-Nazaire. Queuing up to sign the condolence book outside the shipyard, many were openly weeping.
”There just aren’t the right words,” said Rio Sanch who has worked at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique for 25 years. ”The sea is dangerous, Nazaireans know that. Shipyards can be dangerous, we’ve lost colleagues to accidents before. But 15 people dead? It’s more than a black day for this town, it’s a stab in its heart.”
Everything in this squat, unpretty town recalls the sea. The railway station is built in the shape of a boat; the shopping centre on the Avenue de la République, thrown up like the rest of the town after the devastation of the second world war, is modelled on a cruise liner. And a short walk away, its two towering gantries dominating the skyline, is the shipyard that employs almost one in 10 of the 70 000 residents.
”Everyone here knows someone who works there,” said Fadela Bensaim (22) rubbing red-rimmed eyes as she stood before the barred main entrance to the yard and stared at the vast, gleaming bulk of the Queen Mary 2.
”The QM2 was the pride of the whole town,” she said. ”We were planning a huge party when it finally sailed to England, balloons and flags and fireworks and everything. Now look at us. We’re in mourning.”
The accident happened at 2.22pm on Saturday. The 10 metre gangplank leading from the quayside to the liner’s main deck, fitted the previous day by the specialist firm Endel and apparently designed to carry many more people than were on it at the time, gave way.
Most of the 40-plus people on the gangway plunged between 15m and 20m to the concrete floor of the dry dock. Twelve were dead when the first of 40 ambulances arrived 20 minutes later; one more died in the nearby Nantes Hospital on Saturday, a further two yesterday. Twenty-eight were injured, six with serious brain or spinal damage, including a nine-year-old child, the local emergency operations centre said. By last night there were contradictory reports about whether a child was among the dead.
All the victims were either employees of the shipyard, or friends and relatives of senior staff, invited for a tour of the Queen Mary before its departure for the UK before Christmas. Such tours are a tradition, a chance for those who work on the yard’s vessels to show off their handiwork.
The yard’s managing director, Patrick Boissier, told the local radio yesterday that the disaster was ”a catastrophe such as this shipyard has never known. We are, quite simply, devastated.”
Fabrice Ponchaux (32) lost his mother and aunt. His father was in hospital. ”The ship should have been our national pride,” he said.
In the crowded and smoke-filled Magellan, about the only bar open in town, the talk was of who was to blame. ”They used exactly the same kind of gangplank for us,” said one shipyard employee. ”But we never, ever crossed in groups of 40 or 50 at a time, more like half a dozen.” His friend Luc said the QM2 was fated: ”The bloody thing has been built so fast, less than two years from keel to delivery. Something was bound to happen.”
As the afternoon wore on President Jacques Chirac and the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, arrived. After a short visit to a temporary morgue, Chirac said he had come to extend ”compassion, solidarity and sadness in the name of the French people”.
He was due to visit the local hospital later last night, where the injured were still receiving treatment. One badly bruised woman who gave her name as Jessica (21) told France-2 television: ”At the bottom everyone was screaming and there was blood everywhere.”
The local prefect, Bernard Boucault, has announced a full inquiry by health and safety inspectors; numerous problems have been reported at the yard involving subcontractors who allegedly underpaid their mainly foreign labourers and permitted dangerous working practices. There is no suspicion, however, that Endel was to blame.
The â,¬800-million Queen Mary II, owned by Cunard line, had returned from a second successful series of sea trials last Tuesday. The largest and most luxurious cruise liner ever built, it measures 345m long — the equivalent of four football pitches — and is as high as a 23-story building.
Dubbed the Rolls-Royce of the sea, its 2 017 cabins can accommodate 2 620 passengers and 1 523 crew and it boasts five swimming pools, six restaurants, 14 bars and night clubs, a planetarium, indoor golf course, theatre, casino, kennel and health clinic.
Due to be named and launched by the Queen in Southampton in early January, the ship’s 15-day maiden voyage to Florida is already fully booked, with passengers reportedly paying up to â,¬40 000.
The disaster is a bitter blow for the heavy engineering firm Alstom, which nearly went bankrupt early this year before a controversial government rescue operation.
The original Queen Mary entered service in 1936, and went on to become one of the best-known ships of the golden age of liners. Outside the shipyard in St-Nazaire yesterday, the crowd had already rechristened her tragedy-stricken successor the Bloody Mary. – Guardian Unlimited Â