The search continued to find one person still missing in the rubble of a building in Paris’ fifth arrondissement which was destroyed on Wednesday by a very violent explosion of unknown origin, seriously injuring six people.
• Also read: Four seriously injured and two missing when a building collapses in Paris
“The average number of victims at 9 a.m. was six victims in an absolute emergency, still around fifty victims in total,” said the Paris prosecutor on Thursday.
The facts happened on Wednesday shortly before 5 p.m. on Rue Saint-Jacques. An explosion followed by a fire caused a 17th-century building to collapse. This historic monument, a pavilion in the main courtyard of the former Val-de-Grâce Abbey, housed the Paris American Academy, a private fashion school.
According to a statement by the mother of a student on the school’s Facebook page, no students were in the school’s classrooms on Wednesday because they were attending a fashion show in Paris.
“The balance could have been heavier” if lessons had been learned, noted the first deputy mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, on franceinfo.
Two people were reported missing late Wednesday night. “Of the two people searched under the rubble, one turned out to have already been treated at the hospital. Investigations into the second are ongoing,” the prosecution announced on Thursday.
On site, the security area was greatly reduced. The firefighters authorized some residents under escort to collect personal belongings.
Bernadette was able to retrieve her phone and a mother returns with a large teddy bear, a school bag and a small children’s see-through umbrella for her eight-year-old daughter, who was injured on Wednesday.
She said she was walking into the lobby of her building with her daughter when all the windows shattered. His daughter, who was hit in the face, was treated at Necker Hospital and is “traumatized”.
Barricades erected on Rue Saint-Jacques in front of the Maison des Mines student residence kept onlookers and journalists away from the collapsed building, which was littered with rubble.
Damage is to be lamented in many areas. Violeta Garesteaw, caretaker on rue des Feuillantines, perpendicular to rue Saint-Jacques, tosses broken glass into a rubbish bin on the sidewalk. “A lot of the windows in the building are broken, I’m cleaning up in the inner courtyard and we’ve already put up tarpaulins because it’s raining,” she says.
AFP
“Yesterday (Wednesday) was terrible, I thought it was an earthquake. It’s shaking. I thought about it last night,” she says.
Several witnesses and local residents interviewed by AFP said they smelled gas and heard a “large explosion”.
“One of my employees smelled a strong odor of gas and went under the porch to see what was going on,” Philippe Delorme, general secretary for Catholic education, whose premises are near the collapsed building, told RMC on Thursday morning.
“As the accountant dialed the phone number” for the gas company’s emergency service, “the explosion occurred,” he continued.
AFP
Michel Denis, director of the Schola Cantorum, a nearby conservatory, describes “an apocalyptic war scene” with “the ground shaking”, “shattered windows” and “an explosion of unimaginable power”.
“Thank God it was the first day of vacation, so there were very few students,” the man said.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into “involuntary violations through an apparent intentional breach of a duty of care or security”. “The first elements (…) allow us to confirm that this explosion came from the building,” said the Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Paris, Laure Beccuau, on site.
“We obviously rely on the victims to give us the initial information to investigate and understand what may have happened,” she added.
The Paris criminal police were seized.
Around 270 firefighters and 70 vehicles were on site on Wednesday afternoon.
AFP
The firefighters “prevented the spread of the fire to two adjacent buildings that were seriously destabilized by the explosion” and “were evacuated,” said Police Prefect Laurent Nuñez earlier in the evening.
The gas was cut off in a wide area. “About 700 apartments and a student residence” have been excluded since Wednesday evening, “their supply has been cut for safety reasons,” distributor GRDF told AFP, stressing that “we cannot provide any justification for the cause of the claim.”