Paris authorities are debating whether to order inspections of balconies and railings on thousands of buildings along the Seine, warning they could collapse under the weight of spectators watching this summer’s Olympic opening ceremony.
“This is clearly a possible scenario,” Olivier Princivalle of real estate professional association FNAIM told AFP, adding that the subject was raised during regular preparatory meetings with police and city hall officials.
“We absolutely have to make sure that the balconies can support the extra weight and that the railings are strong to avoid accidents.” He said buildings that are often 150 years old or more “are not suitable to withstand the additional pressure that may be exerted, which can cause huge risks of”.
Plans for the opening ceremony on July 26 include a water extravaganza, with more than 10,000 athletes and national officials sailing down the Seine in more than 160 open boats, with 300,000 spectators watching from the riverbanks.
In principle, the balconies of late 19th-century Haussmann-era Parisian buildings should withstand a weight of 350 kg/m22equivalent to about three adults, but authorities fear poor maintenance and overcrowding could cause some to give way.
In 2016, a balcony collapsed during a party in the town of Angers in western France, killing four people. In May last year, a railing and part of a balcony collapsed in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, causing two serious injuries. .
Landlords, social housing providers and management companies are required by law to regularly check the safety of balconies and railings, but not everyone does this. “On top of that, they risk serious overloading during the opening ceremony,” Princivale said.
Paris police and city hall confirmed that the issue, which theoretically involves thousands of buildings along the ceremony’s 4-mile (6-kilometer) route, had been raised but a decision had not yet been made, and the cost of a comprehensive structural inspection had also been set as a ban.
Separately, Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday canceled plans to remove many of Paris’s second-hand booksellers’ book boxes from the banks of the Seine on the eve of the ceremony, saying he considered them part of the “living heritage of the capital”.
Last summer, police told booksellers that for “obvious security reasons” 570 bookstoreDuring the Olympics, about 60% of the stalls had to be temporarily relocated to a special “Booksellers Village”.
Booksellers campaigned to keep the green boxes even if they had to be closed during the opening ceremony, saying they were as much a part of Paris as the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame.
The Elysee Palace said the French president had instructed officials to ensure security arrangements for the ceremony were adjusted to allow for bouquets, For over 400 years they have been selling second-hand books on the quays of the Seine, stay.
