Rue d'Aubagne Memorial

The plaque with eight photographs stands in a small square beside the new single-story building and its courtyard. This narrow stretch of Rue d'Aubagne was once occupied by two residential buildings standing directly next to each other. A center for neighborhood associations now operates here, conceived together with the relatives of those who died and Noailles residents; a separate place of remembrance was left in the courtyard. The eight faces and names in the square keep the site of the former apartments from disappearing into ordinary urban development.

On the night of November fifth, two thousand eighteen, Marie-Emmanuelle Blanc called the fire brigade from her fifth-floor apartment at number sixty-five Rue d'Aubagne. The cracks were widening, the walls were creaking, and she wanted to know whether it was safe to remain there. Marie-Emmanuelle was fifty-five. She lived on social benefits and income from glasswork. The firefighter reassured her: houses do not collapse all at once like that. She thanked him and went to bed.

Seventeen days earlier, the residents had already been evacuated from the building. A partition in the stairwell had bowed, and Richard Carta, an architect appointed by the court to assess the immediate danger, had to decide whether people could return to their apartments. He spent about an hour inside, inspected the indicated partition, but did not go down to the basement or enter the apartments and neighboring buildings. Later expert reports showed that water in the basement was destroying the load-bearing masonry and a brick support, and that the wall between occupied number sixty-five and vacant number sixty-three was severely deformed. After Carta's report, the residents were allowed to return.

In the morning, at nine oh seven, both buildings collapsed. No one was inside the vacant number sixty-three. Eight people died in number sixty-five: Marie-Emmanuelle Blanc, Simona Carpignano, Taher Hedfi, Julien Lalonde, Fabien Lavieille, Pape Niasse, Ouloume Said Hassani, and Mohamed Cherif Zemar. Every name on the memorial plaque belongs to residents and guests of that very building.

Three years later, a plaque bearing the words “Marseille will not forget them” was installed nearby, and the small square was named Place du 5 Novembre two thousand eighteen. On the site of numbers sixty-three and sixty-five, there now stands a single-story center with a courtyard for neighborhood associations. Its design was chosen together with the families of the dead and Noailles residents; the courtyard includes a separate place of remembrance. The old plaque and the eight photographs remain in the square, a few dozen meters from the apartments that no longer exist.