(Marseille) Faced with the rubble of the building blown up on Sunday in Marseille, in the south-east of France, hope is diminishing hour by hour to find survivors and the investigators are now on site to understand the causes of the ‘blast.
Six dead bodies have already been found, while two people remain missing more than 48 hours after the collapse of 17 rue de Tivoli, in the heart of the second French city.
“ The balance sheet remains unchanged, operations are continuing ” to try to find survivors, a spokesperson for the firefighters on site told AFP on Tuesday, while the pile of rubble from the collapsed building has already considerably decreased, with more than 500 cubic meters evacuated.
According to the public prosecutor of Marseille on Sunday, eight people were a priori prisoners of the rubble: “ people of a certain age and a young couple in their thirties ”, specified Dominique Laurens, who must give a new press conference this Tuesday. at 11:00 a.m. (5:00 a.m. EST) on “progress in the investigation”.
Anna and Jacky, 82 and 86, on the ground floor facing the street, Nicole, 66, on the ground floor, Antoinietta, 89, on the first floor, Marion and Michael, 31 and 29, on the 2nd floor, and finally, Jacques and Anne-Marie, 73 and 74 years old, in the duplex on the 3rd and 4th and floors: the local daily newspaper La Provence began to lift the veil on the identity of the inhabitants of the building and therefore of the potential victims.
Hoping that unlisted guests were not there at the time of the explosion, as the mayor of the city, Benoît Payan, pointed out.
“ Finding a survivor would be a miracle, but we believe in it ”, Father Olivier still hoped on Monday evening, during a prayer vigil organized with the Cardinal-Archbishop of Marseille, Jean-Marc Aveline, in the church of Saint -Michel, in the heart of this district of Camas affected by the drama.
In addition to the identification of the bodies found, the investigators seek to understand the reasons for this fatal explosion, the track of the gas leak seeming privileged. On site, 18 investigators from the judicial police were deployed, alongside 22 colleagues from the scientific police.
Gas stove out of order, suicide, leak in the building’s supply network? No explanation has yet been offered.
For the approximately 200 people evacuated as a precaution from neighboring buildings, the question now is when they will be able to return home. But this hypothesis is now excluded for the inhabitants of 15, which also largely collapsed, a few hours after 17, or those of 19, which also threatens to fall.
And other buildings could also be condemned definitively: “ It was incredibly violent and it potentially moved the adjacent buildings, so we must be vigilant ”, warned Monday the deputy mayor for Security, Yannick Ohanessian.
If the evacuees of the five or six buildings furthest from 17 rue de Tivoli can return home on Tuesday, as announced by the firefighters on Monday afternoon, for the others the wait will be longer.
Some of the inhabitants of the 220 emptied dwellings were able to return for a few minutes on Monday to collect personal effects and essential administrative documents. This movement is expected to continue on Tuesday.
What to take with you in an apartment where you lived, when you don’t know when you will return home? Papers, a bike to go to work, clothes, medicine… We “always forget something”, evacuated residents told AFP.
“The worst thing is not knowing how long it will last. What worries me the most is not knowing where I will live, if I have to find a new apartment,” says Alhil Villalba, 33 years old.
For their part, the children returned to school on Tuesday, after the long Easter weekend. But for the students of the Franklin-Roosevelt elementary school, rue de Tivoli, the start of the new school year had a special taste: the building having been requisitioned by the marine firefighters, for their command post, they were distributed to different schools in the neighborhood.
