A preliminary investigation was opened on Friday August 11 by the Paris prosecutor’s office in order to “determine the precise causes of the fire” of a lodging which caused the death of eleven people on Wednesday in Wintzenheim, in the Haut-Rhin, as well as “possible criminal liability”. “The first investigations led to questions about the material and legal security conditions of the building housing the holidaymakers”, write in a joint press release the Paris and Colmar public prosecutor’s offices. The latter, who had opened an investigation after the deadly fire, thus announces that it is divesting itself in favor of that of Paris.
“In view of the number of victims spread over the national territory and the extent of the investigations to come, referral to the collective accident center of the Paris public prosecutor’s office has been requested by the Colmar public prosecutor’s office”, specifies the joint press release. The investigation rests on the counts of “aggravated manslaughter and manslaughter”.
On Wednesday, firefighters had to fight a “general conflagration” of the building. Arrived in less than a quarter of an hour, around 6:45 a.m., they could do nothing to help the vacationers settled for the night on the floors of the building. In total, twenty-eight people were in the building, seventeen of whom were able to get out in time, according to the Haut-Rhin prefecture. The thirteen residents housed on the ground floor by Idoine, an association from Besançon, were repatriated unharmed to Franche-Comté.
Eleven people among the residents housed on the floors, including ten adults with mild mental disabilities, died. Several of them were sleeping on a mezzanine that collapsed.
No visit from the safety committee
The holiday cottage was neither declared at the town hall nor in compliance with safety standards. The burned building, an old barn renovated a few years ago, had “no authorization” for its activity, said Thursday Daniel Leroy, deputy mayor of the small town in Haut-Rhin. “It also had not been the subject of work permits to accommodate disabled people,” he said.
For her part, Nathalie Kielwasser, deputy prosecutor of the Republic of Colmar, stressed that the structure had not received a visit from the security commission. “If you want to drive a car, you need a license; if you want to host people, you need the passage of this commission, ”she explained to Agence France-Presse (AFP). This commission “gives recommendations on the reception capacity” and imposes a certain number of rules. It is necessary to “legally correlate the reason for the loss (…). Does this have anything to do with safety rules? I do not have the return of the criminal investigations at the moment, “added the magistrate.