A four-storey apartment building collapsed on the night of Sunday April 9 in the 5th arrondissement of Marseille, but a fire prevented the rescue services from going in search of possible victims, said the mayor of the city. second city of France.
“Last night at 12:40 a.m., a building at 17 rue de Tivoli collapsed, causing part of the (buildings at) 15 and 19 rue de Tivoli to fall”Benoît Payan told reporters on the spot. “There is currently a fire in the rubble of 17, this fire prevents us from sending the dogs and the teams in search of possible victims who would be under the rubble”.
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The firefighters working in the area have not yet been able to establish a census of the people who could have been present. “We have a hundred men on the ground, the priority is obviously to put out the fire and clear the rubble to find people who may be trapped under the rubble”said the vice-admiral of the firefighters Lionel Mathieu.
Preventive evacuations
The adjacent buildings were evacuated as a safety measure on the night of the long Easter weekend. “Eleven people were evacuated: two people are in relative emergency, nine people are unharmed including two children”further specified the mayor of Marseille.
The streets around the building, in the district of La Plaine, are cordoned off and many rescue personnel – marine-firefighters, police, public security personnel, are present, noted an AFP photographer on the spot. In some of the surrounding streets there was still dust floating around. “It was huge as an explosion”told AFP Gilles, a resident of a perpendicular street.
“The cause of the collapse is not determined”police, fire and town hall officials told AFP.
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“There are strong suspicions that an explosion caused the collapse, but we must remain very careful about the causes at this stage”told AFP the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône region, Christophe Mirmand, specifying that the gas could be “a possible option”.
In November 2018, the collapse on rue d’Aubagne of two buildings in another district of central Marseille, Noailles, left eight people dead. These buildings were in a serious state of unsanitary conditions, in a city where 40,000 people live in slums, according to NGOs.
