More than 150 firefighters were needed to control the fire which occurred in the night from Wednesday to Thursday in Toulouse, in the building located at no. 73 rue Bayard, one of the arteries that connects the station to the city centre. The accident was reported around 2: 30 a.m. in this building described as "viable" and "not unsafe" by the local authorities, but called "antiquated" by France Bleu. After struggling for several hours, firefighters have controlled the fire in the early morning.

The fire "would be declared in the attic" according to the prefecture. In origin, previously unknown, "the fire spread very quickly in the stairwell with great violence", resulting in "the partial collapse of the building," explained to the AFP, lieutenant-colonel Sylvain Gergaud, chief of operations. "A part of the staircase and the floors were wood", a statement to the AFP colonel Sebastian Laid, which could explain the rapidity of the spread of the flames and the heaviness of the balance sheet.

72 residents supported

twenty people were injured, according to the prefecture, including one seriously. It was one of two people who jumped from the third floor through the window to escape the flames, according to kicker . The others have been evacuated by the large-scale or have fled by their own means. "My son was not sleeping I was awake, there was smoke, we each took a girl and we ran down the stairs, even if I was scared because of the smoke," told AFP one of the women, Nikki, a mother of a 17-year-old and two girls of 6 and 4 years old. At the age of 81 and blind, Mary was rescued by her roommate fifty-year-old Eric, who helped her get off its two floors.

On Twitter, the prefecture announced that the plan of the Many Victims (NOVI) "to coordinate the relief and support of victims" had been enabled. The wounded were distributed in the hospitals of the city, while the inhabitants and residents of the Bristol hotel, adjacent to, 72 persons in total, were taken care of in a gym, city close. In addition, two firefighters, one of which passed through a floor consumed, were injured during the operation, which has mobilized a total of more than 200 members of the emergency forces of the order.

"Prostitution, deals, squats, people who slept in corridors, it was like being in the Bronx"

An inhabitant of the building

The four-story building, with the haussmannian facade and deployed around an inner court, "was not concerned with a procedure unsafe or of danger," said the prefecture in a press release. The mayor LR of Toulouse Jean-Luc Moudenc, for its part, confirmed at a press conference, that the building had "not been so reported or listed as unsafe to the community." According to the colonel Laid, a fireman in Toulouse, the municipality is expected to take off in an imminent danger to the building.

Several residents interviewed by the AFP, however, have described a building poorly maintained, and poorly attended. For Nikki, who is of british origin, "the building was unsafe", "there were bed bugs, cockroaches, the paint took off, leakage of sewage into my apartment." "There was a lot of back and forth, people were peeing in the stairwell," adds this mother of a family, claiming to pay 630 euros for 45m2. This building "was a nightmare," chimed in Jeremy, a thirty-something in search of employment, living places in the last six months. "Prostitution, deals, squats, people who were sleeping in the corridors, one would have believed in the Bronx", he insisted. "It was not luxurious but not unhealthy" tempers, however, the octogenarian Marie, noting in particular that "there are fire extinguishers on all floors".

The area has been cordoned off by the forces of law and order and disaster relief. Around 8: 30 this morning, the SNCF has warned its users that a fire "disturbed greatly the access to the station," but that it would "not affect the movement of trains."

By the end of the morning, a cloud of smoke continued to rise from the building, where the fire brigade, mounted on a large scale, worked to extinguish the remaining pockets. This fire comes about two months after the collapse of the November 5, from two dilapidated buildings in the city centre of Marseille, making eight dead. Fearing new accidents and much-criticized, the mayor of Marseille has since evacuated as a precaution 142 dilapidated buildings, or at risk of collapse across the city, and more than 1,100 people.