Editor’s Note
This article clarifies the origin of a loud noise reported by residents near Le Havre, confirmed by TotalEnergies as a routine safety operation at its Gonfreville-l’Orcher refinery.
TotalEnergies has confirmed that the loud noise heard by residents near the Normandy platform on the night of Sunday, January 18 to Monday, January 19, indeed originated from the Gonfreville-l’Orcher refinery near Le Havre. The company states that the noise came from a safety valve and corresponds to “normal operation.”
While the city center of Le Havre resonated with the horns of Senegalese supporters celebrating their African Cup of Nations victory, another, much louder noise led residents of the industrial-port area (ZIP) to ask questions on the night of Sunday, January 18 to Monday, January 19. On social media, particularly the Facebook page Info Trafic Le Havre, residents from Gonfreville-l’Orcher, Montivilliers, Gainneville, and even Saint-Martin-du-Manoir, a town about fifteen kilometers from the ZIP, reported hearing an “impressive,” “deafening” noise around midnight, loud enough to wake some residents.
Tendance Ouest contacted the company Yara on Monday morning, which had indicated on Friday, January 16, on the Allo Industrie platform, that it was proceeding with a shutdown of its production facilities over the weekend. Yara’s communications service quickly indicated that its Le Havre plant was “not the source of the noise heard” the previous night. The Seine-Maritime prefecture, for its part, told us on Monday afternoon that it had received “no reports” of an incident in the industrial zone.
Also contacted on Monday, the company TotalEnergies provided details on Tuesday, January 20, about this sound emission, which was accompanied by water vapor. It confirms that a “technical event” occurred on Sunday around 11:45 PM on the steam network of its Normandy platform, located in Gonfreville-l’Orcher. A safety valve activated automatically on the site’s refinery.
The event had no impact “on the safety of people nor on the environment.” The industrialist apologizes to residents “who may have been disturbed or worried by this noise.”