Almost 24 hours after the gigantic explosion which blew up a four-storey building in Marseille, the second city of France, the rescue services are still looking for eight people presumed missing, a race against time raising fears of a heavy final toll.
The rescuers, whose work has been hampered from the start by a persistent fire under the rubble, continued their operations at night in the light of searchlights, helped by a crane.
The explosion, “extremely violent” according to Marseille prosecutor Dominique Laurens, occurred at 00:46 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.
The authorities fear that eight residents of the blown building who “do not respond to calls” from their relatives will be buried under the rubble, the prosecutor told the press, who opened an investigation entrusted to the judicial police.
No children
These missing are “people of a certain age and a young couple in their thirties”, but there would be no children or minors, said Ms. 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.