At Least Five Die in Paris Airport Roof Collapse

I was just in 2E and 2F this last week, helping a friend get a ticket
changed
on Delta for a flight back to LA; It was my first visit and so i was
a little lost and especially unpleased with the ticket update problem
since we were shuffled around to at least 6 places before getting it
straight. But that is an organizational problem.

2E, 2F are very new and obviously errors have been made in the
construction.
It will be interesting to find out if it is a fault in the conception
or
the execution of the conception. Since 2F is like 2E, is it faulted
too? The others, 2A, B, C, and D terminals have been around for years
and are single floor in conception, not multi floored like 2F and 2E.
Terminal 1 was the first one and it has been trouble free and is multi
floored, with parking on the upper floors. I always preferred Terminal
1 since it was round, if you started on a floor and talked you'd
end back where your started. Great for shopping. For people
welcoming incoming flights, Terminal 1 is more friendly.

I found 2E, 2F cavernous and endless to walk in. Actually
I preferred Orly to the whole Roissy complex.

Earl

****


At Least Five Die in Paris Airport Roof Collapse
Sun May 23, 2004 08:40 AM ET

By Kerstin Gehmlich

PARIS (Reuters) - A least five people were killed and four hurt when
part of the roof collapsed at a new terminal at Paris' Charles de
Gaulle airport Sunday, triggering a search for trapped survivors and
questions about safety.

Slabs of concrete, metal and glass crashed onto a waiting area in
showcase terminal 2E just before 7 a.m., bringing down an entire
160-foot-long, 100-foot-wide section of the raised tunnel-like
building.

Most of the victims were passengers. Police had been sealing off and
evacuating the area after the passengers noticed cracks in the
ceiling and falling dust, 11 months after the terminal opened
following construction delays, airport officials said.

Rescue workers with sniffer dogs were still searching through the
glass, concrete and metal debris and listening for signs of life
several hours after the accident. An Air France vehicle was crushed
as the domed section collapsed.


"Time is a factor. We have to get to the injured as quickly as
possible," fire brigade spokesman Laurent Vibert said at the airport
at Roissy, northeast of the center of Paris.

Another fire-fighter said: "It's like a scene after an earthquake."

The Interior Ministry and local officials initially said six people
were killed, but fire officials later said five were confirmed dead
and a sixth death was expected to be confirmed. It was not clear if
that person was badly hurt or was missing.

The French government ruled out a terror attack but said the cause of
the accident was unknown.

INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS

Most victims were thought to be passengers arriving or waiting to
depart at the busy terminal, while three policemen were hurt.
Ambulances and fire brigade vehicles rushed to and from the terminal
as the injured were ferried to hospital.

Planes were arriving from Newark in the United States and
Johannesburg at the time, and one was leaving for Prague. One of the
injured was Chinese and another was from Ivory Coast.

Passengers heard cracks and saw dust coming down and notified police
who started to evacuate the area," said Pierre Graff, head of
Aeroports de Paris, the Paris airports authority.

"This was a very prestigious hall and it's a very hard day for us
today."

The terminal opened last June at a cost of 750 million euros ($900
million). It opened late, partly because a commission at first
withheld a safety certificate.

French media quickly asked if construction was completed properly or
had been rushed. Jean-Paul Huchon, president of the greater Paris
region, said: "We still don't know the cause but it might have been a
construction fault."

The terminal is planned eventually to have a capacity of 10 million
passengers a year. The airport already handles about 58 million
passengers each year and expected a busy day Sunday, the end of a
holiday weekend.

President Jacques Chirac expressed his sympathy and demanded a
thorough investigation. Transport Minister Gilles de Robien and
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin visited the airport and
expressed their condolences.

Other terminals were still open at the airport but road traffic
built up outside.

Terminal 2E is mainly used by national carrier Air France but also by
other international airlines and has more than 50 flights a day. Air
France said flights were being redirected to other terminals.

(Earl) wrote in
om:


.. I always preferred Terminal
1 since it was round, if you started on a floor and talked you'd
end back where your started. Great for shopping. For people
welcoming incoming flights, Terminal 1 is more friendly.

I found 2E, 2F cavernous and endless to walk in. Actually
I preferred Orly to the whole Roissy complex.


Earl you have to be the only person in the world who likes terminal one
(actually I like the concept of the building even if I rather dislike
being shunted through the gerbil tubes through which the escalators
run.)

2e on the other hand while cavernous was spacious and a welcome respoite
for a claustrophobic passenger.

On 23/5/04 15:29, in article
, "Earl"
wrote:

I was just in 2E and 2F this last week

Likewise, en route to Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I haven't seen any reports
linking the collapse to excessive use of the toilet by a recent passenger,
though.

J;

A roof of a terminal at the deGaulle airport in Paris France collapses and
kills 5 people and all you can offer is a lot of inane blather about how you
were inconvenienced the last time you were there to buy an airline ticket!
Why don't you rush over there Earl and give the rescuers your architectural
suggestions as they are pulling the bodies out of the rubble? I worked on
Wall Street in lower Manhattan and visited the Twin Towers many times on
business, I ate and drank at the roof top restaurant "Windows on the World,
I knew people who were killed on September 11, 2001.........so did millions
of others. SO WHAT! You're a self-centered dottering old fool, Earl. Do the
world a favor: Find a remote location, crawl under a rock, and die.

Capitalist Pig

"Earl" wrote in message
om...
I was just in 2E and 2F this last week, helping a friend get a ticket
changed
on Delta for a flight back to LA; It was my first visit and so i was
a little lost and especially unpleased with the ticket update problem
since we were shuffled around to at least 6 places before getting it
straight. But that is an organizational problem.

2E, 2F are very new and obviously errors have been made in the
construction.
It will be interesting to find out if it is a fault in the conception
or
the execution of the conception. Since 2F is like 2E, is it faulted
too? The others, 2A, B, C, and D terminals have been around for years
and are single floor in conception, not multi floored like 2F and 2E.
Terminal 1 was the first one and it has been trouble free and is multi
floored, with parking on the upper floors. I always preferred Terminal
1 since it was round, if you started on a floor and talked you'd
end back where your started. Great for shopping. For people
welcoming incoming flights, Terminal 1 is more friendly.

I found 2E, 2F cavernous and endless to walk in. Actually
I preferred Orly to the whole Roissy complex.

Earl

****


At Least Five Die in Paris Airport Roof Collapse
Sun May 23, 2004 08:40 AM ET

By Kerstin Gehmlich

PARIS (Reuters) - A least five people were killed and four hurt when
part of the roof collapsed at a new terminal at Paris' Charles de
Gaulle airport Sunday, triggering a search for trapped survivors and
questions about safety.

Slabs of concrete, metal and glass crashed onto a waiting area in
showcase terminal 2E just before 7 a.m., bringing down an entire
160-foot-long, 100-foot-wide section of the raised tunnel-like
building.

Most of the victims were passengers. Police had been sealing off and
evacuating the area after the passengers noticed cracks in the
ceiling and falling dust, 11 months after the terminal opened
following construction delays, airport officials said.

Rescue workers with sniffer dogs were still searching through the
glass, concrete and metal debris and listening for signs of life
several hours after the accident. An Air France vehicle was crushed
as the domed section collapsed.


"Time is a factor. We have to get to the injured as quickly as
possible," fire brigade spokesman Laurent Vibert said at the airport
at Roissy, northeast of the center of Paris.

Another fire-fighter said: "It's like a scene after an earthquake."

The Interior Ministry and local officials initially said six people
were killed, but fire officials later said five were confirmed dead
and a sixth death was expected to be confirmed. It was not clear if
that person was badly hurt or was missing.

The French government ruled out a terror attack but said the cause of
the accident was unknown.

INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS

Most victims were thought to be passengers arriving or waiting to
depart at the busy terminal, while three policemen were hurt.
Ambulances and fire brigade vehicles rushed to and from the terminal
as the injured were ferried to hospital.

Planes were arriving from Newark in the United States and
Johannesburg at the time, and one was leaving for Prague. One of the
injured was Chinese and another was from Ivory Coast.

Passengers heard cracks and saw dust coming down and notified police
who started to evacuate the area," said Pierre Graff, head of
Aeroports de Paris, the Paris airports authority.

"This was a very prestigious hall and it's a very hard day for us
today."

The terminal opened last June at a cost of 750 million euros ($900
million). It opened late, partly because a commission at first
withheld a safety certificate.

French media quickly asked if construction was completed properly or
had been rushed. Jean-Paul Huchon, president of the greater Paris
region, said: "We still don't know the cause but it might have been a
construction fault."

The terminal is planned eventually to have a capacity of 10 million
passengers a year. The airport already handles about 58 million
passengers each year and expected a busy day Sunday, the end of a
holiday weekend.

President Jacques Chirac expressed his sympathy and demanded a
thorough investigation. Transport Minister Gilles de Robien and
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin visited the airport and
expressed their condolences.

Other terminals were still open at the airport but road traffic
built up outside.

Terminal 2E is mainly used by national carrier Air France but also by
other international airlines and has more than 50 flights a day. Air
France said flights were being redirected to other terminals.

On Sun, 23 May 2004 21:17:13 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Earl writes:

2E, 2F are very new and obviously errors have been made in the
construction.

And perhaps nobody will ever know exactly what the errors were.

I'm sure the lawyers will figure it out.

Gordon

Earl writes:

2E, 2F are very new and obviously errors have been made in the
construction.

And perhaps nobody will ever know exactly what the errors were.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Gordon Forbess writes:

I'm sure the lawyers will figure it out.

Not in a Latin country like France. It depends on who is at fault. If
it's a political figure (or sometimes an influential businessman), the
truth will never be known.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Gordon Forbess wrote in
:

On Sun, 23 May 2004 21:17:13 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Earl writes:

2E, 2F are very new and obviously errors have been made in the
construction.

And perhaps nobody will ever know exactly what the errors were.

I'm sure the lawyers will figure it out.

Gordon


the lawyers rarely figure it out, they just point fingers and collect
money if they convince enough people that their finger pointed the right
way.

Engineers often figure it out, but their findings are often filtered by
the lawyers so . . .

On Sun, 23 May 2004 23:09:26 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Gordon Forbess writes:

I'm sure the lawyers will figure it out.

Not in a Latin country like France. It depends on who is at fault. If
it's a political figure (or sometimes an influential businessman), the
truth will never be known.

If Michael Moore is still in the country he could put together a quick
"documentary" and blame it on Bush. No doubt the French would swallow
that in large gulps.

Gordon

Gordon Forbess writes:

If Michael Moore is still in the country he could put together a quick
"documentary" and blame it on Bush. No doubt the French would swallow
that in large gulps.

I don't think the U.S. President had anything to do with it.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.