A strong explosion, the collapse of the building and then the fire that involved the nearby buildings. It happened in V borough of Paris, in the area close to the Latin Quarter and not far from Sorbonne e Pantheon. According to the latest reports, they are 37 wounded, 4 of which in serious condition and at least 2 missing. The search under the rubble went on for hours even though the conditions for the rescuers were almost prohibitive, with the flames having been extinguished for a few minutes and the risk of new explosions or collapses. At the moment no cause of the explosion is established.
For the whole neighborhood, armored by the police and army to facilitate the work of the nearly 300 firefighters who rushed in, the Music Festival ended at 4.55 pm, already in a minor tone throughout France due to the announced thunderstorms. At that moment, after many people had smelled gas, the light went out in the building on rue Saint-Jacques near the place Alphonse Laveran. The epicenter of the explosion was identified at the house number 277where the American School of Art and Design is based American Paris Academy, frequented above all by Americans and English. On the ground floor of the building, built in the eighteenth century, mainly offices. On the upper floors are the classrooms for the students, fortunately largely absent with the courses now concluded for the holidays.
The facade of the building flew away due to the violence of the explosion, a witness – who according to reports from Ansa mechanically repeats the story in front of the television cameras – says he saw a “fire ball” immediately after the tremendous bang. Two buildings next door, which are lined up along an “impasse”, a dead end, were saved from the flames thanks to the intervention of firefighters, but were evacuated immediately because, said the prefect Laurent Nunez, “were destabilized by the explosion”. In the opposite and neighboring buildings, on the other hand, the strict order for those inside was not to go out. But the inhabitants who wanted to go home were blocked about a kilometer away and had to rely on their cell phones to talk to their families.
In the nearby buildings there are the headquarters of 2 other schools, including the Catholic music school ‘Singing School’. Among the witnesses, an Italian lawyer, Francesca Bologna, who told the Ansa agency: “I thought it was an earthquake, but a strong one… so I waited to see if there weren’t other tremors since we Italians have a bit of experience with earthquakes. Instead then I see this very black and very fast smoke emanating into the sky. Three, four minutes, a very dark smoke, very high, which goes towards the west”. The prefect, next to the mayor Anne Hidalgo immediately rushed to the scene, was very cautious about the causes of the disaster, which “at the moment have not been ascertained”, she said. The public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into “culpable injuries” caused by negligence or poor maintenance, a hypothesis that suggests that the authorities are leaning towards the explosion due to the gas. The brief blackout before the explosionperhaps triggered by someone inside the building restarting the electricity, could have been the signal of impending disaster.
Residents of the 5th, a gas explosion has just occurred in Place Alfonse Laveran in the Val de Grace district, buildings are on fire, stay away to allow firefighters to intervene @Mairie5Paris
— Édouard Civil (@EdouardCivel) June 21, 2023