(Marseille) More hope in Marseille, where the last two bodies trapped in the rubble of the building blown up by an explosion on Sunday were found on Wednesday, after four days of research, bringing the final toll of this tragedy probably due to eight dead. to a gas leak.
In a new press release, the prosecutor of Marseille listed the names and ages of the new victims identified: Marion Blox and Mickaël Lequeux, the couple in their thirties from the 2e stage ; Anna Sinapi and Jacky Morand, the octogenarian couple on the ground floor.
They thus join the list of eight inhabitants of this building at 17 rue de Tivoli, in the lively Camas district, blown up on Sunday at 12:46 a.m., in the heart of the Easter weekend.
On Tuesday, the scientific police had already been able to identify Nicole Gacon, 65, who lived on the ground floor; Antoinietta Alaimo, wife Vaccaro, 88 years old, resident of the first floor; and finally Jacques and Anne-Marie Praxy, both 74 years old, the last couple of the 3e stage.
Since Sunday, a hundred firefighters have been hard at work, 24 hours a day, to find the missing, with always the hope of finding survivors, removing more than 1000 m3 of rubble, first with the claw of a crane, then by hand, “centimeter by centimeter”.
In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday alone, 15 dump trucks of rubble had still been extracted, explained the firefighters, specifying that they must now carry out “an emergency consolidation action” of the load-bearing walls of the buildings. adjacent buildings still standing and threatening to collapse, at 11 and 19 Street, “with shotcrete”. A 2e building, at number 15, had already collapsed, a few hours after number 17.
This fragile situation in the neighborhood led to the evacuation of some 300 people, including several families.
“Tonight Marseille is in mourning. Eight of his children died. It’s a tragedy for the whole city, ”reacted the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan, announcing that the clearing operations would continue until Thursday evening.
Complaint against X of the son of a victim
As for the investigation, the Marseille prosecutor’s office also confirmed the complaint against X for manslaughter filed by Bruno Sinapi, the son of Mme Sinapi.
In a testimony collected by France 2, he accused by name the neighbor on the first floor, “a lady who was losing her mind” and “had recurring problems with the gas”. And he called into question the social services, which, warned, would, according to him, have done nothing concerning the gas.
On Tuesday, the prosecution also highlighted the “difficulties in using gas equipment” of this 88-year-old lady.
On the side of the Communal Center for Social Action (CCAS) of the city of Marseille, contacted by AFP, we confirm that we have been alerted by Anna Sinapi and Jacky Morand, “worried about the social isolation of Mme Vaccaro”. And indeed, a social worker from the service had come to her home on March 30, in the presence of a volunteer from the Little Brothers of the Poor and her neighbors on the ground floor.
“It was then agreed to set up a household help, as well as to plan work in his bathroom, for questions of accessibility. But the question of gas has never been mentioned, ”we insist at the CCAS.
One certainty: the judicial inquiry into the origins of the tragedy, opened for manslaughter, still favors “the hypothesis of an explosion due to gas having caused the collapse of the building”, in which neither the services of GRDF nor the Marseille firefighters did not “carry out an intervention in the six months preceding this event”, said the prosecutor on Wednesday.
“The mechanism that led to this explosion will remain to be determined following investigations and expert assessments which will necessarily be long and complex,” she adds.
As for the operation of the gas meters found in the rubble, in particular that of Mme Vaccaro, it’s still ongoing. Only the apartments on the ground floor and first floor were still connected to gas.
To the scar of rue d’Aubagne, where eight people died in 2018 in the collapse of an unsanitary building, is therefore added this new wound, just a few hundred meters away. With the same terrible record.