Building collapses in Paris: six seriously injured, one missing

The search continues for one more person in the ruins of a building in the fifth arrondissement of Paris, which was destroyed on Wednesday by a very strong explosion of undetermined origin, which seriously injured six people.

• Read more: Four people are seriously injured and two are missing after a building collapses in Paris

“At 9 a.m. the intermediate number of victims was six in an absolute emergency, with a total of fifty more victims,” ​​the Paris prosecutor’s office said Thursday.

The facts occurred on Wednesday at 5 p.m., in the rue Saint-Jacques. An explosion followed the collapse of a 17th-century building. This historic monument, a pavilion bordering the main courtyard of the former Val-de-Grace Abbey, housed the Paris American Academy, a private fashion school.

A student’s mother said on the school’s Facebook page that there were no students in the school’s classrooms on Wednesday because they were attending Fashion Week in Paris.

If the lessons had taken place, “the situation would have been very heavy,” Emmanuel Grégoire, the first deputy mayor of Paris, noted on franceinfo.

Two people went missing on Wednesday evening. “One of the two people who were searched under the rubble was already receiving treatment in the hospital. The second investigation is ongoing,” the prosecution said on Thursday.

At the site, the security perimeter has been greatly reduced. Firefighters secured some residents to take personal effects.

Bernadette was able to retrieve her phone and a mother returned to her injured eight-year-old daughter on Wednesday with a large teddy bear, a school bag and a small transparent child’s umbrella in her arms.

She said she walked into the lobby of their building with her daughter when all the windows shattered. Her daughter, who was hit in the face, was treated at Necker Hospital and left “shocked”.

Barricades erected on rue Saint-Jacques in front of the student residence of the Maison des Mines kept visitors and journalists away from the collapsed building, in front of which rubble piled up.

Damage should be regretted over a wide area. Sentinel on rue des Feuillantines, perpendicular to rue Saint-Jacques, Violeta Garesteaw throws broken glass into a sidewalk trash can. “There are a lot of broken windows in the building, I’m cleaning the patio and we’ve already put up tarpaulins because it’s raining,” he says.

AFP

“Yesterday (Wednesday) was terrible, I thought it was an earthquake. It trembles. Last night, I thought about it,” he says.

Several witnesses and residents, interviewed by AFP, said they smelled gas and heard a “huge explosion”.

“One of my collaborators smelled gas and went under the corridor to see what was happening,” said RMC Philippe Delorme, general secretary of Catholic Education, whose campus is nearby, on Thursday morning. Immediately from the collapsed building.

“When the accountant dialed the gas supplier’s emergency service number, there was an explosion,” he continued.

AFP

Michael Denis, director of the nearby music college Scola Contorum, describes “an apocalyptic battle scene”, “the ground shook”, “windows shattered” and “an explosion of unimaginable power”.

“Thank God it was the first day of vacation, so there were very few students there,” the man said.

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into “intentional injuries by manifestly intentional breach of prudence or the duty of protection”. “The first elements (…) lead us” to confirm that the explosion started from the building, announced at the scene the prosecutor of the Paris Republic, Laure Pecuault.

“We obviously rely on the victims to provide us with the first elements of the investigation and to understand what may have happened,” he added.

Paris judicial police arrested.

About 270 firefighters and 70 vehicles were dispatched to the scene on Wednesday afternoon.

AFP

Firefighters “prevented the fire from spreading to two adjacent buildings severely damaged by the explosion” and were “evacuated,” police chief Laurent Nunez noted earlier in the evening.

Gas has been cut over a wide area. “About 700 houses and one student residence” have been lost since Wednesday evening, “their supply has been cut for security reasons,” distributor GRDF told AFP, stressing that “we cannot present a reason for the claim.”