Ten people, including five children as young as 3, have died after an overnight fire devastated an eight-story apartment building in one of the poorest suburbs of the French city of Lyon on Friday, local authorities said.
The cause of the fire, France’s deadliest residential fire in years, was under investigation, including whether it had a criminal origin.
Witness accounts reported by French media described scenes of horror, including residents smashing windows to try to get out of the building and a mother throwing her child out a window to be caught safely by a person on the ground. .
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin quickly arrived on the scene in the small suburban town of Vaulx-en-Velin, about 290 miles southeast of Paris, reflecting the scale of the tragedy. He praised the 170 firefighters who mobilized after flames engulfed the center of the modern apartment building.
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(They intervened) “within 12 minutes at 3 a.m. and were able to save 15 people at considerable risk to their lives,” he said.
Despite the swift response, 14 other people were injured, four of them seriously, according to the Rhône region prefecture. The fire has since been put out.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw several fire trucks and a security perimeter set up around the area, and traumatized residents and neighbors with their children congregating in a parking lot in front of the building.
A police officer stands next to a fire truck next to apartment blocks in Vaulx en Velin outside Lyon in central France December 16, 2022. French authorities say 10 people have died in the blaze.
(AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
The five children who died ranged in age from 3 to 15 years. Counseling centers have been set up in two local schools which authorities believe will be hardest hit by the deadly fire. The rector of the Lyon academy, Olivier Dugrip, said that school students were among the victims.
Authorities said they had begun work on plans to relocate some 88 displaced residents.
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“Families are experiencing a profound tragedy, on a scale we have never known,” said the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin Helene Geoffroy. Its town of 43,000 inhabitants is among the poorest areas of the Rhône region.
Darmanin, who was accompanied on his visit to the site by French housing minister Olivier Klein, was already expected in Lyon on Friday to present the security plan for Sunday’s World Cup final between Argentina and France.
Messages of support have come from all over the world, including from French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and Olympique Lyonnais football club, who have collectively expressed their “thoughts” for the victims of the fire.
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“We send our deepest condolences to their loved ones,” the Lyon club tweeted.
The blaze is the deadliest house fire in France since 2019, when an arson attack in an elegant Parisian neighborhood killed 10 and injured 32.
