At the opening of his trial for manslaughter, Serge Bromberg, film collector and restorer, admitted on Tuesday, November 22 in Créteil to have "committed a fault," after a fatal fire caused by a large stock of nitrate reels that he had stored there. Stored without authorization under an inhabited eight-storey building in Vincennes, these flammable reels caught fire on the night of August 10, 2020, in the midst of a heat wave. Two people died in the violent fire that firefighters brought under control after 6 hours.
The director of Lobster Films stored these reels in a room without air conditioning, without fire alarm, near a glass roof. A "fire wall" had been installed, but was in fact not equipped with thermal insulation and melted in 30 minutes. Investigators estimate that at the time of the fire between 1,364 and 1,935 reels were there, weighing between 2.5 and 3.6 tons. The defendant claimed a different amount of reels: 965 reels, 970 kilos. " It's a fact, not an estimate," he said at the helm. "This place was a "buffer stock," it was only intended to accommodate a few reels before they went to the CNC," defended Serge Bromberg, who was perfectly aware of the risks inherent in nitrate.
Even if he recognizes "a very serious judgement error" and "negligence" on his part, the defendant considers that the CNC had an obligation to recover and store its nitrate reels. "The amount of nitrate was supposed to be extremely minimal" in this room, he explained, adding: "Never before has the CNC refused me reels." "The fact that a site in the countryside, an unused farm, can be used, has it not crossed your mind?" asked the president of the court. “It was certainly a fault, an error, an imprudence,” replied the person concerned, in front of a room where the victims and civil parties came in large numbers. The trial will be held until Wednesday.