“The collapse of a four-story apartment building in the center of the second largest city in France has already left five injured, according to a provisional balance,” the mayor of Marseille warned on Sunday.
The tragedy, probably triggered by an explosion but the exact cause of which is still unknown, occurred around 12:40 p.m. in a residential area on the outskirts of the Plaine neighborhood, known for its restaurants, bars and nightlife.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, is expected to attend the scene in the morning.
The collapse “of a building located at number 17, Tivoli street, swept away part of the neighboring buildings 15 and 19,” Mayor Benoît Payan told reporters at the scene.
Six hours later, rescue operations continue and “we have to be prepared for there to be casualties in this terrible tragedy,” he added.
Five people, residents of neighboring buildings, were injured and a total of 33 were treated.
No resident of the collapsed building has come forward, reigniting concern for the fate of its occupants.
A list of possible missing persons has not yet been drawn up and firefighters are still fighting a violent fire that broke out in the rubble, making the search difficult, said Vice Admiral Lionel Mathieu, commander of the Marseille maritime fire brigade.
More than a hundred men, supported by numerous teams, are involved, but search dog teams have been unable to get into action to search for possible survivors as the heat is too intense.
“Time is of the essence,” Admiral Mathieu said, as the smell of smoke lingered in the area. “The goal is to get the fire under control so that the dogs can be sent out as soon as possible,” explains Laurent, who is leading the operation.
The partial collapse (70%) this morning of number 15 “also complicates the task” of the rescuers because “it adds to the rubble,” explained Commander Laurent. Eight people who had taken refuge on the roof of this building were rescued overnight by firefighters via a large staircase.
At the moment of the explosion “everything trembled, we could see people running and there was smoke everywhere, the building fell onto the street,” Aziz, a man who preferred not to give his last name, told Afp but said he runs a store Nocturnal feeding on the street where the building collapsed.
“There are strong suspicions that an explosion caused the collapse, but we must remain very cautious about the causes at this time,” Bouches-du-Rhône region prefect Christophe Mirmand told Afp, noting that the gas could be “a possible option”.
Other buildings on the street were evacuated as a security measure during the night of the Easter long weekend and their residents were urgently received in a school, the prefect specified.
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the fire.
In November 2018, the collapse of two buildings on Rue d’Aubagne in another central Marseille neighborhood, Noailles, killed eight people and sparked a wave of outrage against substandard housing in the city, where 40,000 people live in slums. , according to NGOs.
But both the mayor and the prefect seemed to rule out that it was an unhealthy building in a very crowded neighborhood.
“There was no danger order for this building and it is not a neighborhood classified as unhealthy housing,” said the prefect.
“As far as I know, there are no particular problems with this building. It is not a street with unsanitary housing,” added the mayor.
Marseille has suffered several deadly building collapses in the last 40 years.
On January 11, 1981, eight people died and 16 were injured in the poor neighborhood of Canet when a building collapsed.
Five people died in 1985 in an accidental explosion at a building near the Boulevard du Prado, and on July 20, 1996, a gas explosion blew up a seven-story building near the Saint-Charles train station, causing 4 dead and 26 wounded.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
