Building collapse in Marseille | “Two lifeless bodies” found in the rubble

(Marseille) “Two dead bodies” were found overnight from Sunday to Monday in the rubble of the building blown up by an explosion in Marseille, in the south of France, firefighters announced.

“Given the particular difficulties of intervention, the extraction (of the bodies from the site) will take time”, specified the firefighters in a brief press release, confirming information from the newspaper La Provence and the BFMTV channel.

“The judicial authority can then proceed to the identification” of these victims, continues the text.

“A status report will be made at the start of the morning”, concludes the press release.

This discovery comes just over 24 hours after the gigantic explosion that blew up a four-storey building in Marseille.

The public prosecutor of Marseille had indicated earlier on Sunday that the rescue services were still looking for eight people presumed missing in the rubble.

“This night the pain and the pain are great”, reacted for his part in a press release the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan.

“We continue to do everything to carry out the rescue operations”, he continued, assuring that “all the services of the City, accompanied by the services of the State, are always, at this very moment, fully committed to further research.

The explosion, “extremely violent” according to Marseille prosecutor Dominique Laurens, occurred at 12:46 a.m. on the night of Saturday to Sunday, as evidenced by the surveillance cameras that captured it.

17 rue de Tivoli, a building housing five apartments in a rather residential area of ​​the city center, was completely blown up. The two adjoining buildings were badly damaged, but all their occupants were able to escape or be saved by the marine firefighters.

One of these buildings collapsed later in the day, burying the scene under even more rubble but without injuring the rescuers. The other is also threatening to collapse.

No children

The missing are “people of a certain age and a young couple in their thirties”, but there would be no children or minors, said Ms.^me Laurens. She also mentioned a ninth person “who is currently wanted at 19 rue de Tivoli”.

“Hope must hold us”, wrote in the evening on Twitter the mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan, present on the scene from the start. “All the teams remain mobilized and determined to help and find people alive”.

Five people were slightly injured and 33 in total “affected”, according to the authorities. Sign of the devastating effects of the explosion, 199 inhabitants of the district-representing 90 homes-had to be evacuated and 50 requested emergency rehousing.

Housing Minister Olivier Klein is due to go to Marseille on Monday, after his Interior colleague Gérald Darmanin on Sunday.

During the explosion “everything shook, we saw people running and there was smoke everywhere, the building fell on the street”, told AFP Aziz, a man who preferred not to mention his name. family, but declared that he had a night food business in rue de Tivoli.

The cause of the explosion was “impossible” to establish at the end of the day on Sunday, according to the prosecutor, in particular because of the impossibility for the legal experts to access the unsecured site.

Gas odors

But “gas is obviously part of the tracks”, she indicated, as before her the assistant in charge of security at the town hall of Marseille, Yannick Ohanessian, according to whom several witnesses mentioned “suspicious smells of gas “.

“We very quickly smelled a strong smell of gas, which remained and which we smelled again this morning,” Savera Mosnier, a resident of a nearby street, told AFP.

All sources therefore insist on the difference with a previous collapse of two buildings, unsanitary these, in November 2018, in another district of central Marseille.

This tragedy left eight dead and traumatized the population, sparking a wave of indignation against poor housing in this city where 40,000 people live in slums, according to NGOs.

“These are not unsanitary buildings at all,” said the prosecutor.

Marseille has experienced several fatal building collapses over the past 40 years.

On January 11, 1981, the collapse of a building killed eight people and injured 16 in the poor district of Canet.

Five people perished in 1985 in an accidental building explosion, and on July 20, 1996, a gas explosion blew through a seven-story building near the station, killing four and injuring 26.