an impressive fire devastates the Sportica sports center in Gravelines where the basketball team plays

The fire started at midday in the Sportica sports center in Gravelines.

An impressive fire destroyed the Sportica sports center, located in Gravelines (North), France Bleu Nord reported Monday, December 25. The fire broke out around 1 p.m. According to the mayor of Gravelines, Bertrand Ringot, the fire started because of a technical problem at the swimming pool. The images of the fire are impressive.

Shortly after 4 p.m. the fire was contained but not extinguished, explains France Bleu Nord. The first material toll was very heavy with the swimming pool, the cafeteria and the basketball hall being destroyed. Two firefighters were slightly injured in the fire according to the Northern prefecture, but no injuries were reported among civilians. “Everything was closed, under maintenance. And there was no training” for the basketball team when the fire started, club president Christian Devos told AFP.

“Rebuild everything”

Nearly a hundred firefighters tried in vain to control the fire so that it did not destroy the basketball hall. This room hosts the Gravelines-Dunkerque maritime basketball club which plays in the Elite championship. Earlier in the day, Sdis 59 advised avoiding the area to facilitate the passage of emergency vehicles.

The mayor of Gravelines affirmed a little earlier that it was “a very serious fire and it will probably be necessary to rebuild everything”. On X, the mayor of Grande-Synthe, Martial Beyaert, brings his “full support for Bertrand Ringot and his teams who are currently going through a terrible ordeal. The city of Grande-Synthe will be at your side”.

The Minister of Sports shows her support for BCM on X: “Courage to you”writes Amélie Oudéa-Castéra who expresses her “solidarity in this event with the club, its 80 employees, its volunteers, its teams and the town of Gravelines which is so invested alongside them”. Amélie Oudéa-Castéra emphasizes that the “elected officials and leaders of the region are already imagining, together, ways of recovery” and ensures that “the State will be at their side to facilitate the reconstruction of this multi-sports complex which they were in the process of tremendously modernizing”.

“We will have to rebuild everything”

“My whole life is going up in smoke”, laments Hervé Beddelleem, executive director of BCM Gravelines-Du, an Elite championship club which plays in the sports center, on franceinfo. Hervé Beddelleem explains frequenting Sportica “since its creation in 1986”. This BCM figure is therefore affected “at the deepest”. “It’s dramatic, dramatic, dramatic“, he repeats, moved. “It’s a legendary room, even if it’s not big it’s been there since 86”explains the executive director of the BCM

“We welcomed the French teams, men’s and women’s, and in French basketball we are, after Villeurbanne and Cholet, the oldest club. Gravelines is a basketball entity.”

Hervé Beddelleem, executive director of BCM Gravelines-Dunkerque

at franceinfo

“Unfortunately how everything burnedcontinues Hervé Beddelleem, everything will have to be rebuilt.”. He fears it will take a long time and is now turning to the team’s equipment supplier: “He has to find us jerseys and shorts for the team, equipment, we have to be able to train in a room with parquet floors and there is not one on every street corner “.

Currently 17th and penultimate in the ranking, the BCM was to host Paris Basket, second in the Elite championship, on Thursday. The match is postponed. The surrounding handball and basketball clubs have offered to lend their halls while waiting to find a lasting solution for the BCM. The city evokes “a challenge because Gravelines and Sportica is a story that has lasted for 40 years”. Clubs from the French championship have expressed their support for the northern club, notably the case of Asvel which mentions the “mythical Sportica”.

For its part, BCM Basketball thanks everyone on X: “Thank you all for your messages of support. The firefighters are doing their best to put out this horrible fire which is destroying our Sportica. Thank you to these heroes, we are sending them all our strengthe