Paris, Aug 9, (dpa/GNA) – Eleven people are missing, after a fire erupted at a holiday home for people with disabilities in north-eastern France on Wednesday morning, officials said.
The people are potentially dead, the French news agency AFP reported, citing the local prefecture.
Seventeen other people were safely evacuated from the building in Wintzenheim, near the city of Colmar in the Alsace region, the local prefecture said.
The missing group is made up of 10 adults with mild mental disabilities, and one carer. “Unfortunately, there is not much doubt,” Christophe Marot of the prefecture said, according to France Info radio. “All these people were in the shelter and could not get out.”
A spokesman for the gendarmerie said the search for the missing continued in the town, which is about 30 kilometres from the German border.
Commenting on the fire, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter: “In the face of this tragedy, my thoughts are with the victims, with the injured, with the people close to them.”
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, called the incident terrible and said she would go to the scene. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin thanked the fire brigade for their quick response.
One person was reported injured in the fire, which broke out around 6:30 am (0430 GMT), and another is in shock, the prefecture said.
Darmanin said the accommodation housed disabled people. The prefecture said an adult group from the city of Nancy was staying there, while a spokesman for the fire brigade spoke of a group from an association that looks after people with disabilities.
The prefecture said the fire was quickly brought under control, but that 300 square metres of the 500-square-metre home had burned.
The numerous rescue workers at the scene quickly got the fire under control, the fire brigade spokesman said.
The broadcaster France Info, initially reported in the morning that the building was still smouldering, and the fire brigade had therefore not yet been able to enter the building.
GNA