Paris
CNN
—
At least 10 people, including five children, were killed when a massive fire ripped through an eight-storey building in a suburb of the French city of Lyon early Friday morning.
The fire broke out on the ground floor of the structure in the municipality of Vaulx-en-Velin, Major Geoffrey Casu, spokesman for the National Federation of Firefighters, told the channel on Friday. French television LCI. Hell then engulfed the top three floors of the building, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.
Frightened families were moved from their beds by what one resident called “apocalyptic” scenes, as smoke and flames enveloped the remains of their homes. In an interview with French radio station RTL, the resident said she and her husband put their children under a damp sheet to help them survive.
Neighbors were awakened by the chaos as early as 2:25 a.m., according to BFMTV, by cries of parents and children crying for help, some from the balconies of their apartments. Passers-by jumped in to help, using whatever ladders they could find.
Emergency services were alerted around 3:12 a.m. and arrived 13 minutes later. About 170 firefighters and 65 fire trucks were dispatched to the scene, the regional authority said. Inside, they discovered that the structure’s internal escape routes had been blocked by smoke, according to Casu, forcing them to reach many family ladders.
With exits appearing to be blocked, the woman interviewed by RTL said her family had tied sheets together in an attempt to escape through the fifth-floor window in the freezing winter darkness. The risk, however, proved too great. They saw neighbors die trying to flee that way.
As they waited for emergency services, the woman’s 4-year-old child appeared to lose consciousness. Hope began to fade
“We saw maybe, I think, death before us,” she said.
The woman’s two children were eventually rescued by firefighters and lowered through the window using a mechanical bucket. She and her husband were evacuated down the stairs, through thick, blinding black smoke.
You couldn’t breathe. The firefighters were all red, we were almost suffocating,” she said.
“It was terrible, apocalyptic.”
By the time the fire was extinguished at 6 a.m., four people were in critical condition and ten others, including two firefighters, were slightly injured by the fire in the commune of Vaulx-en-Velin, the community region of Auvergne-Rhône. Alps said in a statement.
The children who died were between the ages of 3 and 15, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.
“It’s obviously a shock, the toll is extremely heavy,” Darmanin told reporters. He and Olivier Klein, France’s housing minister, visited the scene and met with first responders later in the day.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called the incident “tragic” and offered her solidarity and support to the victims and their relatives.
It is not yet known how the fire started. Local prosecutors said in a statement that an investigation has been launched to determine exactly what caused the fire. Nothing, including “criminal intent,” was ruled out, the statement said.
Technical teams from the judicial police, forensic doctors and firefighters are on site. Victim support associations have also mobilized, the statement said.
The prefect of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Pascal Mailhos, the mayor of Vaulx-en-Valin, Hélène Geoffrey, and a public prosecutor Nicolas Jacquet went to the scene of the incident, said the prefecture.
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