CHRONOLOGIE

	C	H	R	O	N	O	L	O	G	Y
" Burnt factory " Caves of Caumont
1989

The caves of Caumont are certainly the most fantastic place which we had the occasion to visit. Several kilometers of galleries, dug in a chalk cliff in edge of the Seine for the extraction of the stones of churches. All the stones of the Gothic buildings of Rouen and Paris have summers taken here. Enormous corridors develop under ground like an immense labyrinth.

To crown the whole, during the last war, German built an enormous concrete factory there to manufacture V2 intended for the bombardment of London. The factory extends on 300 meters length. It is drawn up in the medium of an enormous corridor and, in this nightmarish decoration, gives shivers in the back. Hundreds of prisoners worked there, locked up under the cliff which streams. Here it rains permanently and makes 10 degrees be like winter.

We are under the ground, water is everywhere. Between the blocks of cement small lakes of a few basic meters were formed. Large water drops are detached regularly from the ceiling and are crushed there in an interminable echo. Impossible to visit this place without thinking of a film: it misses nothing any more but fire so that chaos is total. We decide to launch us in a turning, we will need power generating units for the light, and seen the difficulty of the access to the entry of the cave, the things promise to be complicated.

A few days later, the cameras are on foot, lighting is fine loan: one turns… For fire, we poured liters of gasoline on the surface of the water of the lakes. The gasoline remains on the surface, and in any event the risks appear tiny to us, here all is soaked and there is only concrete to burn. Trustful, we put fire at the lakes.

The surprise was serious! At the same time how the gigantic flames which rise, we are deafened by an incredible thunder clap! A wind violate is raised, and it starts to rain a true downpour! We are médusés, terrorized, one would say that the cave collapses on us! It will take us a certain time to include/understand what had just occurred: fire consumed an enormous quantity of air and created a formidable depression. The cave not having that an opening was transformed into a giant vacuum cleaner. The thunder clap occurred by the brutal expansion of the air, the wind by the aspiration which was followed from there, the rain by the separation of all the water droplets streaming on the vault. One crowned emotion! We came very close to crumbling all the same.

Extract of the film "Incendere"

1989