The Paris Assize Court heard Friday the first testimonies of survivors of the fire in rue Erlanger. 10 people died in the blaze.
“I heard several testimonies that made me realize even more what I did.” After a first week of hearing, Essia B. asked this Friday afternoon at the very end of the hearing to speak. “It’s been a week since the trial started, I’m very dejected, I can’t sleep anymore, I can’t eat anymore. (…) I want to say again that this gesture was not directed against people, this gesture which led to a disaster and I’m so sorry about that.”
These remorse, the second expressed since the opening on Monday before the Paris Assize Court of the trial for the fire in rue Erlanger, echo the first testimonies of the survivors of this disaster which killed ten people on the night of 4 to February 5, 2019. “I was sleeping, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a kind of small explosion, I heard my neighbors screaming from outside”, recalls Mathieu, first resident of 17 bis from rue Erlanger to speak.
“The flames burned my hair”
The young man was 22 years old at the time of the events, he worked in the hotel industry. He lived on the 6th floor for four years. When he hears the first cries, Mathieu leans out the window, he hears that the building is on fire. “I open the door of the apartment, the flames burn my hair, I close the door quickly”, testifies in a calm tone the young man with red hair.
From his story, it is hard to believe the composure he showed. As dense black smoke begins to enter his apartment, Mathieu hears the cries of his neighbors, “not people who are afraid but people who are suffering”. He does not take the time to put on clothes, “always in his underwear”, he takes refuge on a balcony barely “one meter wide”.
“I closed the shutters from the outside and climbed over the railing to once again put myself as far away as possible from the apartment,” he continues.
Mathieu remains in this position for several minutes. He looks to his left. “I see my neighbor trying to get down, hanging on a makeshift rope. I see her falling to the ground,” he breathes.
“I see the fire consuming the staircase”
This neighbor is Radia. She is 40 years old. A “pillar”, a “ray of sunshine” for his family. A beautiful “generous” woman, “turned towards others”, according to those close to her. This night from February 4 to 5, 2019, she is only passing through Paris in this apartment to which she is particularly attached and which she shares with her husband. While new professional projects await her in Granada in Spain, a few months earlier her husband had offered to move her. “She really liked this apartment, she had a view of the Eiffel Tower”, breathes Nadjib in front of the Assize Court.
That evening, around 11 p.m., Radia’s husband heard the shouts of argument between Essia B. and Quentin L. “We have this courtyard that amplifies the sound when someone grumbles”, explains this man with a deep voice. which is hard to hear sometimes. A little later, a siren and then an alarm alerted him. “I get up to see, I open the window and opposite I am flabbergasted, I see the fire consuming the entire stairwell”, continues the forties.
“We are aware that there is no other way out (than the window, editor’s note) that allows us to get out,” he continues.
In this 6th floor apartment, Nadjib is “silent”, “flabbergasted” to the point of having forgotten 18, the number to dial to call the fire brigade, which he looked up on the Internet. Radia “panicked”, “she kept talking”. “She kept telling me that it was over, that we were going to die, I refused to hear her,” sighs the man facing the assize court.
“I was looking for a solution, I had no solution. (…) We saw the neighbors in front of us. We see a neighbor opposite fall in front of us. (…) She gives me the absurd idea of make a rope.”
“When I saw him jump…”
This Friday, the Assize Court could still feel the guilt of this man for not having been able to find an “argument” to “contradict” his wife. Today, he sometimes wonders again and again about the “solutions” he could have proposed to Radia. “It would have been less stupid than trying to get out of the window,” he reproaches himself. But that night, “Radia asked me to start preparing the sheets, I take the cover off,” continues Nadjib. Then the man goes in search of his passport, which he will never get his hands on.
“When I decided to give a fuck and accept the situation as it is, I turn around and she was no longer there,” he breathes.
The makeshift rope broke at the level of the second sheet, the one her husband had handed to her. “I immediately shouted ‘Radia, Radia’, we couldn’t see the bottom. I was flabbergasted, I didn’t know what to do. I still had no visual on the firefighters. I was afraid that our cowardly neighbor taken from his balcony, it was cold, he was in his underwear, he said he could no longer hold on.
Yet the firefighters are indeed there, they also arrived five minutes after the start of the fire. Impossible from the 6th floor to see them as the smoke is dense. Impossible to see them, they could not approach the machines in the courtyard where the building is located. “I saw the firefighter coming from the balcony, he asked me to follow him, recalls Nadjib. I followed him. He took me down a floor with this ladder with hooks.”
Three people jumped out of the window during the fire. Mathieu saw on his right his young neighbor, aged 16, throw himself into the void. “I really think he was cornered. When I saw him jump, there was a kind of determination in his eyes, I think he had no more choice, he testifies questioned by the lawyer for the young boy’s father. When I saw him plunge into the void, I really thought it was my turn…
“I was sorry at that time that I didn’t take my cell phone so I could call my dad and tell him I love him before I died,” the 26-year-old continues.
Nadjib says he “lost the love of his life”. “I lost a loved one, nothing can change that. It’s a tragedy that happened, I try to accept it,” he concludes with lowered shoulders.
