At least two people were injured in the collapse of a four-storey apartment building on the night of Saturday April 8 to Sunday April 9 in the center of Marseille. But this assessment is only provisional, a fire delaying the intervention of the emergency services.
"This night at 12:40 a.m., the collapse of a building at 17 rue de Tivoli, causing part of the [buildings at] 15 and 19 rue de Tivoli to fall," Benoît Payan told reporters on place. "There are strong suspicions that an explosion caused the collapse, but we must remain very careful about the causes at this stage," the prefect of the Bouches region told Agence France-Presse (AFP). -du-Rhône, Christophe Mirmand, stating that gas could be "a possible option".
"It was huge as an explosion," Gilles, a man who preferred not to mention his last name, told AFP, but who lives in a street perpendicular to that of the collapsed building.
"There is currently a fire in the rubble of 17, this fire prevents us from sending the dogs and the teams in search of the possible victims who would be under the rubble", specified the mayor of Marseille.
Several evacuees
The streets around this building in the 5th arrondissement, in the La Plaine district, are cordoned off and many emergency personnel – firefighters, police, public security personnel – work at night.
The firefighters have not yet been able to establish a census of the people who could have been present in the collapsed building whose rubble obstructs the street. "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 marine firefighters, Lionel Matthew.
In the two buildings damaged after the collapse of number 17, "eleven people were evacuated", according to the authorities. Two people are injured, "in relative emergency, nine people are unscathed including two children", further specified the mayor of Marseille. Other buildings on the street were evacuated as a safety measure on the night of the long Easter weekend and their residents welcomed to a school in an emergency, regional prefect Christophe Mirmand told AFP.
Sanitation problems seem to have been ruled out
An investigation is opened to determine the causes of the accident. In November 2018, the collapse on rue d'Aubagne of two buildings, in another district of central Marseille, Noailles, left eight people dead and sparked a wave of indignation against poor housing in this city where 40,000 people live. in slums, according to NGOs.
But both the mayor and the prefect seemed to rule out unsanitary conditions in the building in a district known for its restaurants, bars and nightlife. "There was no danger decree for this building and it is not an area listed as having unsanitary housing," said the prefect. “To my knowledge, there are no particular problems with this building. We are not on the case of a street with unsanitary housing, "also said the mayor
