“The crane truck has just left!”, points out a resident of Charrel, just opposite the R building where a fire broke out this Saturday, May 4 in the morning. It was brought under control shortly after 10 a.m., not without creating a panic in the neighborhood. Firefighters from the departmental fire and rescue service (Sdis 13) were called at 8:43 a.m. for this fire. Around thirty intervened, with the help of ladders and personal rescue groups to evacuate the residents of this R+10 building, chemin du Bon-Civet.
“It was while going to take my motorbike that I saw people looking at the R building and smoke coming out of it.“, says a neighbor. “I immediately called my mother who lives there, fortunately she wasn’t there. But I saw children, families being evacuated, with oxygen masks“, he adds. Among the injured, “14 people are poisoned, and a fifteenth victim complains of chest pain,” reports the departmental fire and rescue operational center (Codis).
“It is not the first time”
If we do not yet know the reasons for this fire, a theory quickly made the rounds in the neighborhood. “Apparently it was the electrical panel that caught fire on the ground floor. I have a friend who took a video where we see the flames“, assures a resident of the building opposite. “It’s super dangerous, people were sleeping when it broke out, on a Saturday morning!” reacted a neighbor. “Especially since this is not the first time that this has happened at Charrel, remembers another resident. Five or ten years ago, I don’t remember, there was a problem with an electrical panel too.”
Almost a year ago, on Saturday April 8, 2023, it was in the same building S that the firefighters intervened, this time for an apartment fire on the first floor. 200 people had been evacuated by the start of the evening. Nearly 80 firefighters were mobilized to fight the flames. And then again more than a month later, on May 25, 2023. The same accommodation on the damaged first floor was the subject of a second fire.
“It’s annoying!”, launches another resident, who attended “to a ballet of firefighters and police officers” from his window when he wakes up. “The entire top of the Charrel was blocked, the police closed the access on both sides,” he says. At the end of the morning, around 10:30 a.m., the situation was under control, and the last fire trucks and vans left the scene.
