Exercise at NATO’s hydrocarbon site in Grau-du-Roi: unusual noise on April 1st, 2026
Kim JANIEC
Published on
It is a fairly unknown area to the people of Gard. Yet, it is located near a tourist area. Indeed, close to Espiguette, in the municipality of Grau-du-Roi (Gard), there is a NATO hydrocarbon depot, classified as Seveso.
As part of an exercise organized by the state authorities and the National Service for Interallied Oil Pipelines (SNOI), on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, an alert siren could sound at this infrastructure.
If you are in Grau-du-Roi or in the surrounding areas, you may hear this unusual noise: it is not an April Fool’s joke, nor a simple beginning-of-month test.
A rescue exercise
Do not panic. Even though the current geopolitical context is not always reassuring and can be anxiety-inducing, this alarm is just a simple rescue exercise. It is a test that will mobilize emergency vehicles as well as those of law enforcement and the armed forces. It will be possible to see these teams heading towards the factory, but this will have nothing abnormal.
If you witness this scenario, the Prefecture of Gard asks the population to continue their activities as usual, not to call emergency services, and not to spread false information. It reminds that no particular action is expected from the residents and that the exercise stops at the alert phase.
Not the first time
This is not the first time such an exercise has been carried out in Gard. In mid-December, a similar operation was conducted near Aigues-Vives, at the Syngenta company site, classified as Seveso “High Threshold”. On that occasion, the state authorities activated the FR-Alert system, which sends a sound notification to all phones in the area. It worked well, despite a glitch, as the word “Exercise” was not included in the message.
At the end of November, an exercise was also conducted at the Distagri company in Saint-Gilles, also involving an alert and the deployment of significant emergency resources. In early October, it was the arenas of Aimargues that were the scene of a full-scale civil security exercise with the deployment of firefighters and emergency medical services.
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