Marseille, April 10 (AFP\/APP):Rescue workers on Monday recovered another three bodies from the rubble of a collapsed building in Marseille, lifting the death toll to six in the southern port city, with two more people still missing, investigators said.<\/p>\n
More than 24 hours after an explosion at the apartment building, where residents reported a strong smell of gas.<\/p>\n
Dozens of civil defence staff, using drones, heat sensors and sniffer dogs, kept working through the debris, where a fire still smouldered.<\/p>\n
Housing Minister Olivier Klein said at the scene earlier Monday that four bodies had been found. But within hours the emergency services announced that rescue workers had found a fifth and then a sixth victim.<\/p>\n
“Work continues to identify,” the victims, investigators from the prosecutor’s office said in an evening statement.<\/p>\n
Marseille’s deputy mayor Yannick Ohanessian said earlier that rescue workers hoped to find survivors.<\/p>\n
But the fire under the rubble has made it hard for the dogs to detect survivors or bodies.<\/p>\n
Firefighter Adrien Schaller described painstaking work.<\/p>\n
“The heart of the blaze is deep underneath and hard to reach with the hoses. And we can’t spray too much water to avoid creating a sort of mud,” he said.<\/p>\n
– ‘Race against the clock’ –<\/p>\n
Rescue workers were clearing away most of the rubble with an excavator, he said, stopping as soon as they spotted an air pocket to continue the work by hand.<\/p>\n
“It’s a race against the clock,” he said.<\/p>\n
Five people in an adjacent property sustained minor injuries in the blast and collapse, which occurred around 12:40 am on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Saveria Mosnier, who lives on a street near the site in the La Plaine neighbourhood, said she was sleeping when a “huge blast… shook the room”.<\/p>\n
“I was shocked awake as if I had been dreaming,” she told AFP.
\n“We very quickly smelled a strong gas odour that hung around, we could still smell it this morning.”<\/p>\n
– ‘Afraid’ –<\/p>\n
Two neighbouring buildings were severely damaged, and one collapsed during the day without injuring any rescuers.<\/p>\n
Almost 200 residents were evacuated from the area.<\/p>\n
“A lot of families in the neighbourhood are afraid,” said Arnaud Dupleix, the president of a parents’ association at the nearby Tivoli elementary school.<\/p>\n
City prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation.<\/p>\n
In 2018, eight people were killed in Marseille when two dilapidated buildings in the working-class district of Noailles caved in.<\/p>\n
That disaster cast a spotlight on the city’s housing standards, with aid groups saying 40,000 people were living in shoddy structures.<\/p>\n
But authorities on Sunday appeared to rule out structural issues in the latest tragedy.<\/p>\n
“There was no danger notice for this building, and it is not in a neighborhood identified as having substandard housing,” said Christophe Mirmand, prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhone region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marseille, April 10 (AFP\/APP):Rescue workers on Monday recovered another three bodies from the rubble of a collapsed building in Marseille, lifting the death toll to six in the southern port city, with two more people still missing, investigators said. More than 24 hours after an […]<\/p>\n
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