Collectively traumatized, the city of the Lyon region is mobilizing to help bereaved and dislodged families. The residents of the dilapidated building are convinced that a war of traffickers triggered the fire.
by Richard Schittly (Lyon, correspondent)
“I was in pajamas. The neighbor was screaming. My cat, I don’t even know if he’s alive or if he died,” said Jordan, 13. Trembling with cold in front of a town hall, the boy tells the night of the tragedy to his friends, who surround him. Friday, December 16, around 3 am, he slept in the family apartment, on the fourth floor of the 12, Chemin des Barques, in the Mas du Taureau district, in Vaulx-en-Velin (Rhône). He heard: “It burns!” His father, Sébastien Novares, 42, was woken up by the heat “stung his nose”. He plated wet sheets and mattresses against the doors. With the reflex to wait for help. “Neighbors on the street shouted to jump out of the window, it was the last thing to do, but it’s hard to keep calm,” he said. His wife and Jordan came down by the firefighters scale. He and his baby in his arms, equipped with oxygen masks, took the stairs, guided by a fire soldier.
“We were told to jump, I was too high perched,” also confides Dainguy (many witnesses prefer not to give their name), 51, resident on the seventh floor with his partner. On the sixth floor, Omer, 43, brought together his family into the living room: “I covered the children, and I told them to wait for lying down, to avoid the rising smoke.” With the heat that intensified , the father told the family to take refuge on the balcony. Alerted at 3:18 am, the firefighters quickly understood that the trap closed. Declared on the ground floor, the fire won the stairs, then jumped two floors, making the evacuation quick. “I told them to take care of the neighbor of the seventh, she was panicking too much,” said Omer. The man waited an hour, before going down as a harness and reminders along the facade guided by a firefighter. His whole family was saved.
others did not have this chance. Intoxications, burns, falls in the floors, the assessment is unprecedented in the most popular commune of the Lyon agglomeration: ten dead, including five children aged 3 to 15, four seriously injured, fifteen light injured. And an immense collective trauma.
“unworthy common areas”
Residents and residents report a scene of chaos. Cris, desperate mother throwing her children out the window, before throwing herself into a vacuum. Inanimate body. “My mother’s neighbors are dead, I can’t believe it,” said a teenager by joining the municipal premises where the survivors are welcomed. “I heard glass noises, it woke me up. When I looked at the window, I saw the flames below,” reports Mohamed, 23, resident living in front of the buried building . “I called the 18th and I went down to guide the help. When I arrived I heard screaming with fear, from” help “. It frozen my blood,” said the young Vaudais, marked by distress the victims. Some recited the Chahada, a Muslim prayer of the certificate of faith. “When we press the worst, we say this prayer,” explains the young man. In the completed neighborhood, the acrid smell of fire floats all morning, and the day does not seem to want to get up, through a dull, cold and humid sky.
You have 60.93% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.