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Paris Watch

What lies beneath

By Mariko Kawaguchi


パリの地盤沈下

パリにはその昔、採石場がたくさんあり、建築物用の石材を大量に切り出していました。そのせいで今も地下は空洞だらけ。事故防止のため、市は地盤調査をしたり、建築規制を施行するなどの対策を講じていますが、それでも落盤事故は後を絶ちません。最近もサクレ・クール聖堂の建つモンマルトルの丘近くで事故が起きました。

Imagine that you open your door one morning as you go out for work and find a big, mysterious crack on your street that surely wasn't there the night before. You also discover that you have long been living in a neighborhood that is as shaky as a tightrope.

This would be upsetting if you lived in Japan, which is hit frequently by quakes, but if you live in Paris, you don't have to be so surprised. On a recent morning, a stretch of Rue des Martyrs on northern Montmartre Hill suddenly collapsed, leaving a pit 8-meters wide and at 5-meters deep. Residents learned that the road had been held together by only a 25-cm-thick layer of macadam, cement and dirt which covered a hidden crevasse lying beneath.

Since this accident in March, the question "Is your neighborhood safe?" has been the talk of Parisians — especially among inhabitants of Montmartre, where concerns that apartments might collapse one day are especially high.

In fact, there are good grounds for the concern. Although not many locals and even less tourists know it, Paris stands on an unstable bedrock.

French say that they live and walk on a "gruyere" — semi-hard cheese with cavities inside — referring to the unsubstantial bed on which Paris rests. Can you picture an underworld, eaten up by canals and more than a dozen lines of metros (not to speak of the famous Parisian sewers and catacombs) that crisscross in an area that is only about double the size of Tokyo's Setagaya ward?

In fact, neither metros nor sewers are the direct cause for the ground insecurity. Rather, it is due to a long history of excavation in the region. Paris used to have well-known quarries, the earliest excavation records of which date back to the Gallo-Roman period. Massive chunks of limestone were dug out to construct cathedrals and edifices, gypsum was extracted to make plaster and chalk was used for lime and cement.

Quarrying lasted for many centuries, and wasn't stopped until the late 18th century, when King Louis XVI, alarmed by successive ground collapses, prohibited all excavations in the area. But by then, the bedrock of Paris had already become as hollow and precarious as it is today. Areas like Montmartre Hill, an ancient quarry that had long provided builders with good materials such as Parisian chalk, literally became a cavity.

Outside of the 18th District, around Montmartre, the entire northern part of Paris is also said to be standing on more or less unstable ground — including the 10th, 19th and 20th Districts that circle Butte Chaumont: another famous quarry now converted to an open, rangy public park.

To prevent disasters from happening, Ville de Paris' security surveillance team has been surveying the town for many years, in order to detect fissures or any signs of collapse. Its task includes measuring ground movements, consolidating precarious ground by cement injection, issuing public warnings in case of danger, enforcement of construction regulations, etc.

In the early '70s, the team detected an immense air pocket, about 8,000-sq.-meters, just beneath Gare de l'Est (East Station).On and around Montmartre Hill, the most shaky zone where several collapses and cave-ins of roads have been witnessed over the past several decades, the inhabitants are all too aware of the risk they face, yet they seem to accept it with a certain fatalism.

An antique shop owner on Martyrs Street, where the latest accident occurred, pointed at cracks on the floor made by moving bedrock, and sighed: "But what can we do? Tant pis if it hits my house one day."

Only a couple of stairs above his shop, is the top of Butte Montmartre. The Butte, one of the tourist attractions of Paris, stands about 130-meter high above the Seine. The hill is jammed with hundreds of tourists who come to visit the magnificent basilica, the famous vinyards, ancient cabarets, remnant windmills and other scenes eternalized by the brushes of Bohemian artists during the last century.

Of course, tourists have no idea as to what's going on beneath their feet: actually, built in the late 19th century and one of Paris' symbols today, the 80-meter-high, chalky Basilique du Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) is said to be crushing down, slowly yet steadily, the entire hill with its heavy weight.

Fortunately, according to a Parisian newspaper, there is no "immediate danger." So don't worry, you still have some time left to come up and pose for a nice souvenir shot . . .


Shukan ST: May 4, 2001

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