Toulouse: the expertise begins in the building where two balconies have fallen
On Monday, experts began their investigation to understand the fall of the two balconies which occurred last Saturday in a building in Montaudran.
On the ground lie broken flowerpots. An eco-cup and a corkscrew tumbled into a grove. As they suffer the building with two balconies collapsed last Saturday, in Montaudran, a woman in a yellow dress whispers to her friend “Do you realize? Mine is perched the same!”
The remains of the said balconies are still lying on the side, at the foot of the building. Surrounded by a security cordon, they wisely await the investigation initiated by Heritage, the company lessor of this social housing.
Since Monday and until the end of the week, a structural engineer examines the forty balconies that make up the building. On Thursday, the Polyexpert group will launch the first phase of the expertise. According to the Heritage company “It will first concern the two dwellings impacted by the fall of the balconies, knowing that the balcony on the 1st floor fell under the effect of the stall of the balcony on the 2nd floor”.
Tenants fear poor workmanship
Tenants, worried, examining their own balustrades whose accesses have all been condemned. In the fifth, a couple testifies: “On ours there are plenty of cracks”. In the one overlooking his daughter’s bedroom, this tenant on the third floor describes “a crack so big that you can put your hand through it” and wonders, “I who worked in the building, I looked at the collapsed balconies and the holes they left, I feel like there wasn’t enough ironwork.” If he remains cautious and waits impatiently to read the expert report, other inhabitants fear construction defects like him.
One of the inhabitants of this building built in 1993 claims to no longer have confidence in the solidity of his balcony. “We will have to do some work, he declares. If it is consolidated, we will be happy to stay my wife and I, because we have been happy here for seven years, but if they do nothing or remove just the balconies without replacing them, we will leave.”
Sitting at the table in her dining room between a box of pastels and a coffee, the program “Everyone wants to take their place” in the background, Marie-Josée says: “With neighbors we asked if the rent was going be adapted since we no longer have access to our balconies. But we have not yet had an answer.”