Seven situations your cameras already see, and an inspector finds once a year
In 2025 the French State inspected 279 warehouses in the Lyon region for fire risk: 80% had non-conformities. Most of them are visible on the cameras already installed.
In the summer of 2025 the State services of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region ran what the prefecture itself called a “crackdown” on fire risk in warehouses. The outcome fits in three numbers: 279 sites inspected, non-conformities in 80% of them, 16 formal notices.1 The year before, fires accounted for 72 of the 132 industrial accidents recorded in the region.1
Those numbers do not describe careless sites. They describe what happens in an ordinary warehouse between two visits: a pallet left “for five minutes” in front of an exit, a fire aisle eaten away by end-of-month overstock, a rack filled above the permitted height, cardboard stacked next to the forklift chargers. Each of these is a state of the site. It drifts during the day and takes a few minutes to fix. And each one sits in the field of view of a camera that already exists.
What the inspectors look for
The 2025 campaign targeted warehouses under 50,000 m³ first, the ones under the lighter declaration or registration regimes and the least supervised.1 The points checked are those of the French order of 11 April 2017 and the usual ICPE (classified installations) requirements:
- emergency exits clear and signposted;
- width and continuity of circulation aisles and fire aisles;
- storage height kept below the limit set by sprinklers and walls;
- battery charging areas separated from combustible materials;
- no outdoor storage against the façades;
- firefighting means reachable (hose reels, extinguishers, hydrants, fire-engine access).
An inspection report published on the Géorisques portal, for a site already under a prefectoral formal notice, records obstructed emergency exits and proposes an administrative fine.2 That is not a rare case. It is the typical one: the state observed on the day of the visit, with nobody on site able to say how long it had lasted.
Viviez: the cause was on the recordings
On 17 February 2024 a warehouse burned in Viviez, in the Aveyron. The French industrial accident investigation bureau, the BEA-RI, published its report in May 2025. The most likely cause, it writes, was the thermal runaway of a portable battery stored in a plastic container. It knows this because it watched the site’s own video recordings.3
The cameras saw it. Nobody was watching. The evidence served the investigation, not prevention.
At Grand-Couronne, on 16 January 2023, the scenario was similar: lithium-metal-polymer batteries stored in a rack, a flash seen by staff, a thermal runaway that then took the stock.3 Here too, the storage conditions of the first minutes are exactly what a zone camera records all day long.
Seven situations an ordinary camera can see
| Situation | What the inspector records | What the camera sees |
|---|---|---|
| Blocked emergency exit | Exit not clear, sign hidden | A pallet, a pallet truck or a forklift in front of the door |
| Narrowed fire aisle | Width below the requirement | Pallets on the floor in the aisle, for hours |
| Storage above the height limit | Clearance to sprinklers not kept | Pallets on the top level or above the marking |
| Combustibles in the charging area | Battery charging mixed with combustible material | Cardboard, stretch film, wooden pallets next to the chargers |
| Outdoor storage against the façade | Risk of spread into the building | Empty pallets, skips and packaging piled along the walls |
| Firefighting means hidden | Hose reel or extinguisher unreachable | Stock in front of the red cabinet |
| Fire door wedged open | Compartmentation defeated | The door held open by an object, all day |
None of these requires recognising a person. None requires a new camera. They require looking at the right zone, regularly, and keeping a record of what was seen.
What changes when someone looks while the site still exists
Camly connects to a site’s existing cameras and checks, at regular intervals, a small number of states that you define in plain language: “emergency exit B is clear”, “fire aisle 3 is at full width”, “no combustibles in the charging area”. When a state is no longer compliant, the site receives an alert with the image, the time and the camera. When it is compliant again, the episode closes, and the history stays.
What comes out is not one more video feed. It is evidence of prevention: how many times exit B was blocked this month, for how long, at what hours, and how long it took to clear it. That is the material the risk assessment document (the DUERP) needs, and it is what a site manager can show an inspector, an insurer or the works council without waiting for the next visit.
Three clarifications, because honesty beats a promise:
- Camly is not a fire detection system and does not replace the fire safety system, the sprinklers or the alarm. It watches the states that precede a fire, not the fire.
- Camly does not identify people. Findings are about a zone and a state. They go into the DUERP, never into an individual file.
- A periodic check is not a continuously analysed stream. It catches what lasts, which is precisely what an inspector finds.
Where to start
Take your site’s last inspection report, or the last internal checklist. The non-conformities that keep coming back are almost always situations from the table above. Pick three, find the cameras that cover them, and watch them for thirty days. That is exactly the scope of a Camly pilot.
Sources
- Prefecture of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, “Prévention des risques industriels : l’État mène une vaste opération coup de poing sur le risque d’incendie dans les entrepôts”, updated 16 September 2025. prefectures-regions.gouv.fr
- Géorisques, ICPE inspection report recording obstructed emergency exits on a site under a prefectoral formal notice. georisques.gouv.fr
- BEA-RI, report on the SOPAVE warehouse fire, Viviez, 17 February 2024 (May 2025); BEA-RI, report on the Highway France Logistics 8 warehouse fire, Grand-Couronne, 16 January 2023 (March 2025). igedd.developpement-durable.gouv.fr, Grand-Couronne report (PDF)