Infant Rescued from Deadly Apartment Fire in Stains, France; Mother Injured

"When I came out of my house, I saw thick black smoke, then this woman on the sidewalk, her arms completely burned. She was carrying a small child and pointing to her apartment shouting: ’Fire! My baby!’" recounts Serge, who lives in the adjoining building, to Le Figaro. The screaming woman is a Moroccan in her thirties who lives in Stains in an apartment with her two children, aged 2 and 6 years old. Alerted, the firefighters arrived on the scene. "When the firefighters arrived, they immediately went to get the child," Serge continues. They then climbed a small wall to rush into the burning apartment as quickly as possible. They managed to get the little boy out of the apartment. "He was unconscious. They gave him cardiac massage on the ground before putting him on a stretcher with an oxygen mask," and taking him urgently to the hospital, he adds. He is currently hospitalized and in "absolute emergency". "Hearing this mother screaming for her child, I’ve never experienced anything more heartbreaking," Serge confides.

The fire broke out at 1:53 a.m. The toll is three dead (three women) and eight other injured people. While the cause of the fire is currently unknown, Djamilla*, a friend of the Moroccan thirtysomething, believes she knows. "It’s certain that the fire that broke out in her home is related to the unsanitary condition of the building," she says. To support her argument, she recounts the unhealthy conditions in which her friend’s family was living. "The basement is flooded and in the hallways there are bare electrical wires. Damp and mold have risen up to my friend’s apartment. On the walls of her apartment, there are mushrooms everywhere. It’s so damp and dusty that the 2-year-old has developed asthma," Djamilla details, estimating that such a tragedy "could have been avoided." "The town hall had offered her another accommodation in a hotel outside Stains. She had to refuse, it’s not a place to live when you have two small children, and the 6-year-old goes to school in Stains!" she fumes angrily. She intends to organize a demonstration in the coming days "so that people know how the residents were treated here".

The adoption by Stains of a decree on the safety of the building on September 29 provides for the evacuation of the families next Wednesday. "Infiltrations", "leaks", "cracks", and "severely damaged structure". The city’s sanitation inspector had concluded that there was a "serious and imminent danger" to the residents due to the risks of "fire by excessive heat" and "collapse", summarizes the decree posted on the facade of the building. On site, the (left-wing) mayor, Azzédine Taïbi, argues that work needs to be done because of, in particular, the negligence of the owners that has led to the deterioration of the walls and the structure. "It’s a tragedy for all of us, a trial that will be hard to overcome," laments the mayor, who says he has spoken with the father of the injured little boy who is with him at the hospital. "The situation is terrible. We are waiting for news about his condition," he adds.