Ten people, including five children as young as 3, died after an overnight fire ravaged an eight-story apartment building on Friday in one of the poorest suburbs of the French city of Lyon, local authorities said.
The cause of the fire, the deadliest residential fire in France in years, was under investigation, including to establish whether it was criminal in origin.
Witness reports published in the French media described scenes of horror, including residents breaking windows to try to get out of the building and a mother throwing her son out of a window for a person on the ground to catch him safely.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin quickly arrived at the scene in the small suburban town of Vaulx-en-Velin, some 290 miles southeast of Paris, reflecting the scale of the tragedy. He praised the 170 firefighters who mobilized after flames ripped through the center of the modern apartment block.
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(They intervened) “in 12 minutes at 3 am and were able to save 15 people by taking considerable risks to their own lives,” he said.
Despite the rapid response, another 14 people were injured, four of them seriously, according to the Rhône region prefecture. Since then, the fire has been extinguished.
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 gathered in a parking lot in front of the building.
A police officer stands next to a fire truck next to apartment buildings in Vaulx en Velin, on the outskirts of Lyon, in central France, on December 16, 2022. French authorities say 10 people died in the fire.
(AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
The five children who died were between the ages of 3 and 15. Counseling centers have been set up at two local schools that authorities say will bear the brunt of the deadly fire. Lyon academy rector Olivier Dugrip said school students were among the victims.
Authorities said they have begun working on plans to relocate some 88 displaced residents.
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“Families are experiencing profound tragedy, on a scale we have never known,” said Vaulx-en-Velin Mayor Helene Geoffroy. Its small town of 43,000 inhabitants is among the most impoverished areas of the Rhône region.
Darmanin, who was accompanied on his visit to the site by French Housing Minister Olivier Klein, was already due to be in Lyon on Friday to present the security plan for Sunday’s World Cup final between Argentina and France.
Messages of support poured in from everywhere, including from French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and the Olympique Lyonnais soccer team, who collectively expressed their “thoughts” for the victims of the fire.
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“We send our deepest condolences to his loved ones,” the Lyon club tweeted.
The fire is the deadliest house fire in France since 2019, when an arson attack in a posh Paris district killed 10 people and injured 32.
