EXPLOSIÓN EN FRANCIA – EXPLOSIÓN EN FÁBRICA DE FERTILIZANTES

... 29 muertos, 10 desaparecidos, 2.500 heridos, 800 hospitalizado,... 20.000 casas, apartamentos y escritorios dañados, tres hospitales, escuelas, un campus universitario y un estadio de fútbol están inutilizado. La explosión registró 3.4 grados en la escala Richter.

TOULOUSE, France, Sept. 24 — Acrid smoke still rose today from the wreckage of one of France's largest petrochemical plants, reduced to a skeleton of giant steel girders bent like twigs in a huge explosion last Friday that wreaked environmental damage and even stirred fears among residents that they, too, were victims of terrorism.  Local and national officials from President Jacques Chirac on down have tried their best to quash such fears. Tonight, as fire fighters officially abandoned the search for any survivors in the debris, Toulouse's prosecutor, Michel Bréard, insisted that "technical details" indicated that it was "99 percent certain that it was an accident."  He added that there was no evidence as to what caused the catastrophe but hinted it might have resulted from a lack of care. "The risk of an explosion was not considered important by the site's security."

Mr. Bréard, prosecutor of France's fourth largest city, has ordered a judicial inquiry into the disaster on Friday. The blast left 29 people dead, at least 10 missing, and injured more than 2,500 as it damaged buildings as far as three miles away and spewed acid clouds into the air. Close to 800 remain hospitalized, some of whom may yet die from burns or internal injuries.

Philippe Douste-Blazy, Toulouse's mayor, stood today on a street in Mirail, a shattered neighborhood where every family was shoveling broken glass and torn roof panels, and said some 20,000 homes, apartments and offices had been damaged. Three hospitals, more than 60 schools, a university campus for 25,000 students and a soccer stadium are unusable, "closed until further notice," he said. He appealed for help from the army to join in the cleanup and prevent pillaging.  The mayor is among the many vocal Toulouse residents who now wonder how the petrochemical plant, classified as "high risk," came to be so close to the edge of a city of one million people.

Environmental inspectors announced today that most of the ammonia and other gases thrown into the air had dispersed but warned nearby towns and villages not to drink tap water because the plant had contaminated the nearby Garonne River. The scale of the damage — like the cause of the explosion itself — will probably take weeks if not months to determine, city officials said.

At the ruined plant on Sunday, smoke still curled above the wreckage. "We have to take a break," said David Fabries, pulling away his pair of search dogs. "My dogs and I are getting overwhelmed by the fumes."

Managers and workers at the plant, meanwhile, still talk of a terrorist act or foul play rather than a lapse in their own security as the likely cause of the blast. Like much of the rest of the world, the residents of Toulouse are jittery after the terror attacks on the United States on Sept. 11.  "There was a first noise and then a few seconds later a huge explosion," said Marcel Berson, who lives near the plant. "It blew me across the yard against the wall," he said, showing cuts on his head and his arms. "I couldn't breathe. My wife started screaming, it's a plane, it's a plane. She had been watching on TV what happened in America."

The AZF chemical works, on a 40- acre site flanking the Garonne River, is France's largest manufacturer of fertilizers, along with other products. Built in 1924, it was later modernized and bought by the oil and chemical conglomerate Total-Fina-Elf. It employs 470 workers, and when the explosion occurred shortly after 10 a.m. last Friday, the working day had just begun.

Gathered at a makeshift funeral parlor on Sunday, workers and their families bade farewell to 22 colleagues who were killed. Large men sat silent in tight circles, their faces blank.  Jean Thomas, a worker with 26 years at the plant, said he and his workmates had gone over the disaster a hundred times without coming up with an answer. "We've been around ammonium nitrate for years. Believe me, it does not just blow up. You have to set it on fire."

For investigators, the epicenter of the disaster is a 150-foot-wide crater, now filling with water, once a warehouse holding the 300-ton stock of fertilizer. When it blew up, the explosion caused earth tremors measuring a magnitude of 3.4 on the standard seismic scale.

Ammonium nitrate is the kind of fertilizer that farmers regularly keep stocked in nylon bags. Experts here said that even a very large stock of ammonium nitrate is not a problem as long as it is kept dry and cool. If it gets humid it can heat up and ferment, leading to spontaneous combustion.

But chemists also explained that fertilizer, while commonly available as plant food, can also serve as an explosive. For the fertilizer stocks to explode in the Toulouse warehouse, experts here said, some kind of fuel and a source of sudden intense heat would probably have been needed as a detonator.  "There was no pump, no heat source in that building," said Michel Barret, one of the chiefs of maintenance. "With all the measures we take here, it cannot be an accident. To me this was a deliberate act."

Managers of AZF said the site was subject to rigid controls and inspections. The last inspection in May this year reportedly had found no abnormalities.

Philippe Dufetelle, a physician and deputy mayor of Toulouse in charge of environmental affairs, said a new site for the chemical works had been found several years ago. But the management and the workers trade union had repeatedly argued that a move would be too expensive and might lead to the closing down of the plant. Moreover, he said, the AZF plant is interlinked with two neighboring industrial complexes and a gunpowder plant, making a move not only costly but highly unlikely.

At the regional government, officials said no new decisions about the plant would be likely until the causes of the disaster were known. In the meantime, long processions of trucks have been clearing the site, hauling away the remaining chemicals for storage elsewhere.

But much of Toulouse is still looking over its shoulder. Special security measures have been taken at Toulouse's large industrial park several miles from the plant, headquarters of some of France's top companies including Airbus Industries, the aircraft manufacturer, and a branch of the European Space Agency.  The events of Sept. 11 had already cast a different light on some other recent incidents. Police investigators said that since the attack in America they had renewed their inquiry into a recent robbery of 18 canisters of bottled gas from a local vendor, but that they so far had turned up no link to either suspected terrorists or the disaster at the chemical plant.