“We have to be prepared to have victims,” said Benoît Payan, as a fire spread through the rubble.
By VP with AFP
© NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
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Drow in Marseilles. Last night, a building collapsed in the city center of Marseille. Research is underway to find possible victims after the collapse of a four-storey apartment building in the center of Marseille, which left at least two injured. “We must prepare to have victims in this terrible tragedy,” said the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan.
“Tonight (from Saturday to Sunday) at 12:40 a.m., the collapse of a building at 17 rue de Tivoli, dragging down part of the (buildings at) 15 and 19 rue de Tivoli,” said Benoît Payan. , to journalists on site.
“There are strong suspicions that an explosion caused the collapse, but we must remain very careful about the causes at this stage,” the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône region told Agence France Presse. , Christophe Mirmand, specifying that gas could be “a possible option”. At the time of the explosion “everything shook, we saw people running and there was smoke everywhere, the building fell on the street”, told Agence France Presse Aziz, a man who preferred withhold his last name, but said he ran a night food business on the street where the building collapsed.
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A fire under the rubble
The rescue operations were complicated by “a fire in the rubble of 17, (which) prevents sending the dogs and the teams in search of possible victims who would be under the rubble”, specified the mayor of Marseille. But these continue with significant resources deployed. The entire area around the building, in the La Plaine district, is still cordoned off with several streets closed.
Many rescue personnel – firefighters, police, public security personnel are still hard at work, noted journalists from Agence France Presse. The firefighters could not immediately establish a census of the people who could have been present in the collapsed building, whose rubble obstructs the street.
“We have a hundred men on the ground, the priority is obviously to put out the fire and clear the rubble to find people who may be trapped under the rubble,” said the commander of the firefighters, the vice -Admiral Lionel Mathieu.
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Evacuations
In the two buildings damaged after the collapse of number 17, “eleven people were evacuated”, according to the authorities. Two people are injured, “in relative emergency, nine people are unscathed including two children”, further specified the mayor of Marseille. Other buildings in the street were evacuated as a safety measure on the night of the long Easter weekend and their residents were taken to a school in an emergency, regional prefect Christophe Mirmand told Agence France Presse.
An investigation is opened to determine the causes of the accident. In November 2018, the collapse on rue d’Aubagne of two buildings in another district of central Marseille, Noailles, left eight people dead and sparked a wave of indignation against poor housing in this city where 40,000 people live in slums, according to NGOs. But both the mayor and the prefect seemed to rule out unsanitary conditions in the building in a district known for its restaurants, bars and nightlife. “There was no danger decree for this building and it is not a district listed as having unsanitary housing,” said the prefect.
“To my knowledge, there are no particular problems with this building. We are not on the case of a street with unhealthy housing, ”also said the mayor.