Associated Press, Paris | World | Sun, April 28 2013, 8:04 PM
An explosion ripped off the side of a 5-story residential building in
France's Champagne country on Sunday, killing at least two people and
injuring nine others, officials said. A search for survivors was
underway.
More than 100 rescue workers,
firefighters, sniffer-dog squads and bomb and gas experts were deployed
to the gutted building in a subsidized housing complex in the city of
Reims, east of Paris, officials said. Early pictures on the Web site of a
local newspaper, L'Union L'Ardennais, showed heaps of debris spilling
out of the building onto a grassy esplanade below, with two helmeted
people perched up on a crane for a look inside.
Reims mayor Adeline Hazan told France's BFM television that "a very
powerful explosion" had taken place, blowing out windows of nearby
buildings. She said the bodies of the two people killed remained under
the rubble. Hazan said the blast had the earmarks of a possible gas
explosion but insisted that only a thorough investigation would
determine the exact cause.
Michel Bernard, the
top government official in Reims, told The Associated Press that one
person was seriously injured. He said the building dated to the 1960s,
and an official investigation was under way to determine the cause. He
said about 10 of the 40 or so apartments in the building were affected.
He said a search for possible survivors under the rubble was under way.
The precariousness of some buildings has come to light
internationally in recent days following the collapse Wednesday of an
8-story building in a suburb of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where at least 362
people have been confirmed to have died. Officials there said three of
the floors of that building, which had housed garment factories, had
been built illegally.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.