On Thursday night, a fire in a building in Vaulx-en-Velin, in the north-eastern suburbs of Lyon, left ten people dead, including five children, and fourteen injured, four of whom are “in critical condition,” the Rhone prefecture announced.
The fire has been extinguished. As of Friday morning, it has yet to be determined how it started, according to a statement.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters in Paris before heading to the scene that 10 people were killed, including five children aged between three and 15.
“We do not know the cause of the fire and the investigation will be able to find out,” he said.
“It’s shocking and the toll is extremely heavy,” he said, adding he had already discussed what had happened with President Emmanuel Macron.
The fire broke out shortly after 3am in a seven-storey building in the suburbs of Lyon and mobilised nearly 170 firefighters, the same source said. Two firefighters were slightly injured during the intervention, according to the prefecture.
The fire started on the ground floor and quickly spread to the upper floors. Nearly 170 firefighters had been deployed at the building.
“It was horrific,” said Mohamed, whose last name was not given, the cousin of a resident who managed to escape from the fourth floor to safety with his two children.
A large security cordon was set up in the area, a district that had been undergoing a process of substantial urban renewal.
The emergency services were busy on the scene with ambulances, trucks and flashing lights, according to an AFP photographer.
In the middle of the night and on one of the coldest nights of the winter, the rescue operation took place in “difficult conditions”, said Darmanin.
The area had often been the scene of social tensions in the Lyon suburbs, sometimes gritty areas in total contrast to the glitzy city centre which is a magnet for international gastro-tourism.
But the local authorities in the early 2000s launched a program worth 100 million euros to revamp it into a so-called “eco-district” to develop local shops and expand public transport.
Olivier Klein, the French Minister for Urban Affairs and Housing, is due to join the authorities on site in the morning to assess the situation, according to the prefecture.
