The 21st september 2001 disaster in Toulouse : an historical overview of the land use planning

International audienceMore than three years after the Toulouse disaster, on 21st September 2001, the direct causes of the explosion of the storage of roughly 400 tons of off-specification ammonium nitrate (AN) in a fertilizer plant are not clearly established. It will probably be a major lesson to learn from this disaster. However the plant was located in the vicinity of Toulouse city and the explosion turned into a disaster with severe damages and effects : 30 persons were killed, up to 10 000 people were injured, 14 000 people have been curing post traumatic acute stress, and a cost estimated by insurers of 1.5 billion Euro. Another major lesson is that, in the continuous debate on where to locate levers of actions for major accident prevention, the Land Use Planning (LUP) came back into the issue of regulators in France and EU. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide information on the key points of the history of the LUP that was set between the plant and the neighbouring activities. Also, the damages of the disaster in this LUP context are discussed