In March, the composure of this everyday hero helped save lives during the fire in a residence on rue du Pré-au-Clerc.
Certain news items deserve to be revisited to make the invisible visible.
At the beginning of March, sixty people were evacuated during a fire in a building on rue du Pré-aux-Clerc. Without the intervention of Aymane Soualmi, night watchman at the neighboring senior residence, the results could have been catastrophic.
This is, in any case, what the police think, who are full of praise for him: “Bravo for what you have done. Your name came up several times during the investigation. You saved seventy people”.
Aymane’s story reveals courage and composure worthy of an emergency professional. “I led the operations to get people out of their homes around 4 a.m. A resident called me on the phone and said in complete panic: “There’s a fire across the street!”
“It’s totally instinctive”
But where did he find the resource to act methodically? According to him, “in his past as captain of an American football team and in a disaster film”. He completes: “It’s totally instinctive, survival. I have two children. I thought about them, but it was stronger than me, I had to go upstairs, even if I didn’t know if I were going to go back down”. As a red glow and large flames escape from the building, “I whistle loudly to warn, people go to their windows, then go out and I ask them to move away from the building and arrange themselves by floor to count them. Then, I am warned that on the fourth floor lives a 93 year old lady, deaf. I go up, knock on all the doors, wake up a couple with a baby. A neighbor on the 8th floor, seeing me knocking without result, tells me that she has her keys at home. hesitates to allow me to go get them. Finally, I go up to the eighth floor, then go back down to wake the sleeping deaf lady, telling her not to be afraid, “there’s a fire, I’ll help you.” I wrapped it in a blanket and carried it to the foot of the building. I met the firefighters and informed them that there was no one left!”.
When help arrives on site, Aymane discreetly leaves and goes to resume his position as night watchman at the neighboring residence. The residents of the neighborhood, touched by this act of bravery, wanted to highlight the one who was not spoken about in the heat of the moment.
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