(Paris) The search continued Thursday evening to find a person still missing in the rubble of a building in the Ve district of Paris, destroyed on Wednesday by a very strong explosion of undetermined origin which left six seriously injured.
“The person sought is still missing,” said a source familiar with the matter. “The search is continuing but is complicated by the risk of further collapse of neighboring buildings. The rubble is still a threat to relief workers,” she added.
Rue Saint-Jacques, carpenters arrived in the evening and set up large projectors to illuminate the ruins of the collapsed building and continue the clearing work, noted an AFP journalist, while the noise of chainsaws invaded the neighborhood.
The latest provisional assessment of the explosion and the destruction of the building, communicated Thursday morning by the Paris prosecutor’s office, reported “six victims in absolute urgency, and still around fifty victims in total”.
The facts occurred on Wednesday shortly before 5 p.m. in this artery in the center of the capital. An explosion followed by a fire caused the collapse of a 17th century pavilione century, classified as a historical monument, which bordered the main courtyard of the former Val-de-Grâce abbey and housed a private fashion school, the Paris American Academy.
According to the mother of a student who spoke on the school’s Facebook page, the students had deserted the establishment on Wednesday to attend a Fashion Week show in Paris.
“The balance sheet could have been heavier” if courses had taken place, noted the first deputy mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, on franceinfo.
” Traumatized ”
In the aftermath of the disaster, the firefighters authorized all day residents to search for personal effects in their homes, evacuated for security reasons.
A mother returned with her arms laden with a large teddy bear, a school bag and a small transparent child’s umbrella for her eight-year-old daughter, who was injured on Wednesday, an AFP journalist noted.
She had just walked into the lobby of their building with her when all the windows shattered. Her daughter, hit in the face, is “traumatized”, she testified on condition of anonymity.
Damage is to be deplored in a wide area.
“Many windows have been broken in the building, I am clearing in the inner courtyard and we have already placed tarpaulins because it is raining”, described Violeta Garestreaw, the concierge of a building on rue des Feuillantines, perpendicular at rue Saint-Jacques.
“It was terrible yesterday (Wednesday), I thought it was an earthquake,” she added, “that night again I thought about it.”
Several witnesses and residents, interviewed by AFP, said they smelled gas and heard a “big explosion”.
investigations
“One of my collaborators strongly smelled a smell of gas and went to see what was happening under the porch”, told RMC Philippe Delorme, general secretary of Catholic education, whose premises are very close to the building. collapsed building. “When the accountant dialed the telephone number” of the gas supplier’s emergency service, “the explosion took place”.
Director of the Schola Cantorum, a nearby music school, Michel Denis described him as “an apocalyptic war scene”, with “the ground shaking”, “exploded windows” and “an explosion of unimaginable force”. .
The Paris public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for involuntary injuries by manifestly deliberate violation of an obligation of prudence or security. The “first elements” […] lead us to confirm that this explosion started from the building, ”declared the prosecutor, Laure Beccuau.
The Paris judicial police have been seized of the investigations.
Some 270 firefighters and 70 vehicles were engaged at the scene of the disaster on Wednesday afternoon.
The gas has been cut in a wide area. “Around 700 homes and a student residence” were deprived of it, “their supply was cut for security reasons”, the distributor GRDF told AFP, stressing that “we cannot advance a case” on the reason for the accident.
Many residents of surrounding buildings weakened by the blast of the explosion were evacuated. “Hotel accommodation will last as long as it takes,” the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing, Ian Brossat, told AFP.