In Wingles, in Pas-de-Calais, a mother and her two daughters were killed in a fire in their house around 4 a.m. Two sons of the victim, aged 11 and 12, managed to escape the disaster, the causes of which are not yet known. The neighbors who helped the family spoke of their shock on RMC.
A 37-year-old woman and her two daughters, aged 9 and 16, died on Monday in a fire in their house in Wingles (Pas-de-Calais), a disaster whose origin was accidental, according to initial reports. Two other children in the family, two boys, were rescued by a neighbor and taken to Lens hospital.
According to a police source, the possibility of a criminal origin of the fire is “discarded”, the investigation focusing on the conflagration of a battery of motorized personal transport vehicle of the gyropod type, which was in progress recharge.
“We heard an explosion and the children scream”
The fire broke out around 4:15 a.m. One of the neighbors, awakened by the noise, went to get a ladder to get two children out who were at the first floor window.
“We heard an explosion and children screaming. Looking out the window I saw smoke so I grabbed my ladder and went out to help them. We took the two boys down, but there were other children who were inaccessible,” says Marc, the neighbor in question.
-“There was too much thick, black smoke. Everything quickly burst into flames, it was carnage,” he describes. According to him, the babies who survived were in a state of shock.
“We did what we could, taking out the children we could, then we took the water jet to water. We had to take them out, we didn’t think about it,” explains Romain, another neighbor. “It was shocking, but we’re not heroes, we just did the right thing,” he concludes.
An open investigation
The two rescued boys, aged 11 and 12, were evacuated “in relative urgency” by emergency services and transported to Lens hospital, according to an officer from the departmental fire and rescue operational center (Codis). The mother and her two daughters could not be saved. At the beginning of the afternoon, their bodies were evacuated from the first floor using a basket. The father was at work at the time of the tragedy, said the mayor.
An investigation opened for “destruction by fire leading to death” was entrusted to the interdepartmental judicial police service (SIPJ) of Pas-de-Calais, indicated the public prosecutor of Béthune, Étienne Thieffry. The Béthune public prosecutor’s office went to the site to make initial findings, the prosecutor said.
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