The fire started around midnight in a family home located in Rupt-en-Woëvre, a village about twenty kilometers south of Verdun.
The fire broke out in the middle of the night. A father and his 14-year-old son died on the night of Monday to Tuesday in the fire that ravaged their house in Rupt-en-Woëvre, near Verdun in the Meuse. The body of another 3-year-old child is still sought in the rubble, BFMTV learned from concordant sources.
At 12:35 a.m., the departmental service firefighters received the alert. When they arrived, the flames had already pierced the roof of this old house, under renovation. Half of the house was destroyed by the flames, a part where the bedrooms were.
The father tried to rescue his children
A family of eight lived in this house: a couple in their forties with their four children, as well as the grandmother and maternal uncle. When the fire broke out, for an undetermined reason, the mother, grandmother, uncle and two children managed to get out of the house. The father went back inside to try to rescue his other two children.
Her body and that of her 14-year-old son were discovered in the rubble. The first floor of the house, built mainly of wood, collapsed on the ground floor. The body of another 3-year-old boy has not yet been located by firefighters. Cared for by the emergency services and welcomed at the town hall of the village, the survivors were hospitalized in Verdun, in a state of shock.
40 firefighters were mobilized most of the night to put out the fire. “There was a risk of spread”, details Lieutenant-Colonel David Hantzo, commander of operations on this fire. An investigation was opened to determine the causes of the disaster, it was entrusted to the Verdun research brigade.
