1. A brief overview of the state of the art

1.1 AZF case

Until the morning of September 21, 2001, it was simply the name of a company belonging to the Total-Fina-Elf group, which few people knew existed. If you do an Internet search today on the acronym "AZF", the first site that comes up is entitled: "Toute l'info sur la catastrophe". So today, AZF is first and foremost a "disaster" known to all...

If there has been media coverage, of the kind that continues to this day – and still continues –, it's not just because there was a serious accident at this company. It's essentially because the devastation was not confined to the site, spilling over into neighboring companies in the industrial zone and, beyond that, into the town itself. Aside from the human toll, which immediately mobilized the legal system,...