500 customers ordered to leave their rooms in the middle of the night. Friday evening shortly before midnight the firefighters of Cannes were called for a start of fire within the Martinez, famous palace of the Croisette.
The alert was given around 11 p.m. on Friday evening.
Upon their arrival at the Martinez hotel in Cannes, the firefighters were confronted with a fire in a 10 m² technical room, located on the 1st floor of the hotel.
All the occupants of the palace, ie 500 customers and staff, had been evacuated before the arrival of help. They were gathered on the sidewalk around the establishment.
Rue Zamenhof, perpendicular to the Croisette, was blocked to traffic by the Municipal Police who intervened in support of the fire services.
An elderly person, inconvenienced by the smoke, was taken care of by the nurse of the firefighters.
The fire was quickly extinguished by firefighters using a fire hose. The cause of the fire, which is believed to be accidental, is unknown at this time.
Customers, many of them in shorts and T-shirts on this hot evening, had to wait nearly three hours, while firefighters carried out smoke extraction from a corridor, and reconnaissance of use on all floors, by means of of a multi-gas detector.
The occupants of the hotel were all able to return to their rooms and traffic was completely restored around 2:30 a.m. around the hotel, signaling the end of the operations that customers will no doubt remember for a long time.