Municipal Body of the Firemen of the Town of Marseilles

The municipal Corps of the firemen of the town of Marseilles was the service which ensured the fight against the fire and the help Marseilles until in 1938.

The October 28th 1938, the Incendie of the New Galleries plunges Marseilles in the drama and will precipitate the fall of the municipal Body of the firemen, which will be quickly replaced by a Bataillon of sailor-firemen.

Manpower of the Body of the Marseilles firemen

The municipal body of the firemen of the town of Marseilles is made of three companies, which include/understand each one a section except row. It is directed by a staff of five officers who are:

a major,
a captain, second in command,
an officer-engineer and
two chief consultants.

The men who compose the battalion are professional firemen, paid by the Marseilles municipality. They are thus municipal employees.

Re and E company are known as “Companies of city”. It is they whom the Marseillais know best because these are the two companies which ensure the protection of the city. They are confined with the central barracks of the boulevard of Strasbourg. Except its section except row, each one among it is made up of the following personnel:

a captain;
six sergeants;
two lieutenants (or second lieutenant);
twelve corporals;
two adjudants;
between 85 and 90 sappers.

The E Company, known as “Company of the port”, while depending on the city, is in fact under the narrow control of the Chamber of commerce. We will study his very particular operating process further.

In 1938, a problem of manpower was latent. Indeed, the battalion, any confused company, has a legal manpower of four hundred men. But there are really only three hundred and four twenty fifteen men for a manpower running of approximately two hundred men.

Real manpower of the body in October 1938

Re Company: 127 men including 106 firemen and 21 men of section except row (drivers)
E Company: 134 men including 103 firemen and 31 men section except row (drivers)
E Company: 129 men:

1st group: 26 men with the ground service and 30 with the fire boats
2nd group: 34 men with the ground service and 34 fire boats

Staffs:

Chief of police: 1
assistant Captain: 1
Officer Engineer: 1
Head doctors: 2

that is to say a total of 395 men As we saw, the firemen employed by the battalion were municipal employees. As such, they were part almost all of the trade union. However, this trade union often had the ear of the mayor or his assistant what could create problems. An striking example of the interference of the trade union in the good walk of the battalion is “the business of the coffees”. Around the barracks, there were very many bars. To fight against some leave-outward journey, the chief of police decided the closing of the doors of the barracks to 21:00. A few days later, it was obliged to make back machine under the pressure of the town hall which had received several complaints of the trade union.

Lastly, it should not be minimized the role that played Simon Sabiani as assistant deputy with the firemen under the municipalities Flaissières and Ribot. Playing on its station, it made enlist many Corsican compatriots, all entirely with its pay, loans as well as possible to help it at the time of the electoral campaigns, in the worst case, to make the punch. They are the Corsican families of the district of the Basket which will profit more EC die where the changes were done locally. Paradoxically, even after the departure of Simon Sabiani, the applications for vacation continued to be numerous in election time. For the staff of the battalion, it was out of the question to refuse them. During these periods, the battalion was found several times under manpower.

After its accession with the armchair of mayor, Henri Tasso never attacked this stronghold sabianist, true furoncle in a municipality which it tried to make become socialist. It was probably its great error.

Mode of recruitment of the Marseilles firemen

According to the decrees into force at the time, and mainly that of the August 13rd 1925, the sappers must be recruited by the board of directors of this body. However, with regard to the city phocéenne, a serious drift intervened in the recruitment of this body which should have been a crack corps. Recruitment was fixed with the clientelism even with the ideological orientations, particularly until in 1935 where Simon Sabiani due to give up his station of assistant deputy with the firemen following his defeat at the polls.

The arrival of the Tasso municipality did not change the order of the things. Simply, the basin clientelist changed. As in the previous years, the list of incorporable continued to be established by the mayor and the deputy assistant. In the same way, they continued to approve the nominations! The board of directors did not have any more but to ratify the choices already carried out by the municipality. The nominations of officers followed the same process exactly but, obviously, their political convictions owed, moreover, being in total conformity with that of the mayor or the deputy assistant.

In the handwritten report/ratio established in 1939 bound for the examining magistrate in load of the investigation on the fire of the News-Galleries the commander Fredenucci, posts some since January 1933, quotes an striking example of this municipal interference. Whereas Henri Tasso, then minister, were in Paris, the first assistant made incorporate a candidate without informing the mayor of it. The next morning, Henri Tasso, in person, telephoned the commander Fredenucci to make break this incorporation taken without its downstream. For the little story, the candidate was accepted two days later on recommendation… of this same mayor Henri Tasso!

The Body was thus subjected to the double pressure of the policies and the trade union. This irrefutable fact, addition with the curious mode of recruitment of its manpower, involved serious gaps in the organization even of this municipal body. Indeed, the Body was structured to comprise five posts of captain. Two of them only were provided:

that of officer engineer by the captain Serfs;
that of captain of the fire boat Alarm by the Massiani captain.

Each of the three companies should have been ordered by a Captain. Unfortunately, in 1938, the three stations were vacant.

In the same way, if all the posts of lieutenants who were nine, were provided on paper, it should not be forgotten that three of them acted as “captain”. So three posts of lieutenant were occupied by subalterns. Moreover, by the mode even of recruitment, all these lieutenants, selected on criteria more political than professional, were professional values and of unequal instruction. this could handicap certain teams when they intervened on the fires.

This principle of “cascade” in the ranks touched all the rows of officers and of under officers. It resulted from it a serious handicap for the Body from the firemen. Since 1935, there had been no important nomination within the battalions except some rare advances made necessary by the service. Thus, on October 28th, 1938, the following stations were vacant:

Captains: 3
Lieutenants: 3
Adjudants: 1
Sergeants: 1 (of which a furrier)
Corporals: 9

Operating process of the Body

In 1938, the Marseilles firemen lay out only of only one barracks located at the boulevard of Strasbourg, called central barracks. It is the only barracks which was born on the three programmed before the First World War. The other projects were sacrificed on the furnace bridge of town planning. For example, concerning the “southern” barracks, the ground acquired with the military authority Boulevard Rabatau, saw to rise buildings of Sogima.

At the time of the fire of the News-Galleries, there thus exists a central barracks and four stations (Endoume, Town hall, Mont of Piety, place Jean Jaurès). These stations were telephones and guards not having any utility from the point of view of the fire fighting pure. Arranged in stores or public places, no automobile material could be placed there.

The operation of the body is based on the system of turn of duty. These guards, twenty four hours, are carried out by bearing by each company. There is on average about fifty safe man permanently to the barracks at the time of the meals where there can be only half of manpower.

Indeed, the absence of barracks was particularly felt at the hours of the meals. No sufficient installation of refectory not existing, the hierarchy allows the sappers not placed with the barracks of Strasbourg to take their meal in residence. Each company is then divided into two broadsides which have two hours to be restored. The time slots for this operation are:

10:45 - 14h45 for the lunch
18:00 - 22h00 for the evening meal

Thus to these hours there, the five fire pickets envisaged were reduced to two and half either twenty men plus some available, or on the whole about thirty men. We know what this irrefutable fact cost at the time of the fire of the News-galleries which occurred during the off-peak hours.

The E Company: a particular case

The main mission of the E Company, known as “Company of the port”, is the defense of the port authority. For this high-risk mission, it includes/understands a hundred and thirty men and has the material bought and maintained by the Chamber of commerce Marseilles. This material is without common measurement with that of the “Companies of city”. It is in excellent state, recent and powerful.

The port authority installed, within the harbor enclosure, two rescue stations, the post office of the Jumbo derrick where is fifteen men permanently and Madrague posts it which includes/understands to him only ten men. This device is reinforced by two fire boat including/understanding each one a score of men of crew.

The 3rd company is without possible dispute the most professional company of the Body. Its organization is rational while its personnel is involved and informed well well. Several times its professionalism was quoted in example at the time of interventions within the harbor on fires of boats or worse enclosure, on chemical fires.

As for the personnel of guard, it is constantly ready to leave (and entirely) to the first call. In the case which interests us, one will relatively tardily call upon these “supers” firemen.

The material used by the Marseilles firemen

; Material of Re and E Companies:

3 Laffly fire-engines (standard 100m) of which one in repair at the time of the disaster;
1 van-pump Delahaye 1913
2 fire-engines Delahaye 1917
1 fire-engine Renault 1925
1 Magirus large scales on carrier Delahaye 1913 (Material heavy, cumbersome, difficult to operate and practically unusable with fire as this fire showed it)
1 tractor-crane Latil (operation of roadway system and rescue on public highway)

; Material of the E Company:

1 fire-engine Somua (standard 300 m)
1 reel of accompaniment with lance-monitor assembled on mounting platform
2 fire-engines Ratchet-Schneider-Drouville (standard 100 m)

; Naval material:

1 fire boat, Alarm - Flow 1 200 m under a pressure of 12 kg with moreover drainage pumps for rescue of boat outputting 3 000 m
1 fire boat, the Durance - flow 400 m under a pressure of 5 kg.

But this beautiful inventory hides in fact of many problems. In the handwritten report/ratio already quoted, the Commander Fredenucci is not tender towards the material in general. For example, it cannot be prevented from specifying that the Delahaye fire-engines were acquired by the city in 1917 following the visit in Marseilles of a representative of the state which worried about the state of decay of the material of help. But, in 1938, these fire-engines old, puffing and are adapted any more to the mission of fight which is theirs

The fire-engines Laffly, much more recent, are subjected to criticism in this report/ratio. They fall often broken down and are not easy use. The initial engine is not powerful enough for their weight of ten tons. That involves many breakdown without counting the frequent ruptures of the back tree. The replacement of the engines must thus be carried out, which burdens the budget with the body.

In clear terms, the material is old and suffered much during its career. However, the appropriations allocated with the body of the firemen by the town of Marseilles constantly remain stationary. The municipal administration thus does not follow the additional applications for credit made by the battalion

Remarks concerning on October 28th, 1938

The dissolution of the body of the firemen intervened following terrible the fire of the New Galleries, on Canebière on October 28th, 1938. The deficiency of the firemen was pointed finger by the experts to explain the 75 victims.

Fire having been announced has 14:37, we are into full in the time slot with the lunch. Only there in the barracks the men of the first broadside are really available at this time, that is to say twenty five men. If the Body could make leave fifty and one men before 14:41 as the registers indicates it, that is explained by:

the arrival before the hour limits 14:45 of the majority of the men of second broadside;
the use of the personnel “seconded” present to the barracks.

A departure at this time there implies that only two stakes and half (twenty five men of the first broadside) normal and are correctly equipped. For the first two stakes, each man occupies the place of his function. Starting from the third stake, the Body assembles the stakes to haste, the small happiness, the liking of the arrivals. However, the professional value of these stakes is some decreased. Indeed, starting from the third stake, the crews which leave are not composed with the maximum of effectiveness. For proof, the quoting number of witnesses of the sappers without helmet or with part of their missing equipment.

October 28th, 1938, was of service the 2nd Company, the 2nd Group and the staff is a theoretical total of 212 people. In fact, this day, there were only 133 sappers available.

On theoretical the 134 sappers of the 2nd company, only 89 are available. On theoretical the 73 sappers of the 2nd Group of the 3rd Company, only 42 are available. Lastly, on the 5 staff officers, only 2 are available The lacks this day there are distributed in the manner following:

staffs:

commander Fredenucci: wounded before;
medical officers: two of rest;

personal:

16 sappers in “additional rest” (one day of rest for seven days of service)
18 sappers in annual leave;
2 in exceptional permission;
11 sappers in disease (the rate of the patients of 5% lets suppose that the physical shape of the Marseilles firemen leaves something to be desired)
11 “detached” sappers (assigned to repairs of the barracks);
18 sappers in interior service.

That is to say a total of 79 sappers nonavailable

Conclusions

Fire has surprised everyone by its speed of propagation and its power. In spite of the deficiencies which one could find in the body of the firemen of Marseilles, the fight against a disaster of the width of the News-Galleries exceeded their capacity.

As for the staff, nothing had prepared it to face such a drama

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