2023-08-15 03:37:48
The investigation is accelerating after the violent disaster of a five-storey building which killed three people, early this Sunday, August 13, on the tourist place des Aires in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes). The result of the analyzes carried out in recent hours by a fire expert leans very seriously on the side of a voluntary act: “His first findings lead him to rule out a loss of accidental origin, and to favor the thesis of an intervention human “assured, this Monday in a press release, the parquet floor of Grasse.
Specialists are not done yet. In the coming days, the exploitation of samples taken by the national scientific police service of Marseille should make it possible to find out more, in particular to determine the firing system and the addition or not of “accelerating products”.
VIDEO. Three dead in a fire in Grasse
Because it still remains to be determined what really happened on this disastrous Sunday around 3 o’clock. When firefighters arrived on the scene, the flames engulfed the stairwell, trapping several residents who could not escape the blaze. One of them, panicked, would have even tried to leave by the main facade before killing himself by falling. His remains were found outside the building.
Arrested Sunday evening
Did someone then knowingly provoke this tragedy in the heart of the world capital of perfume? If caution remains in order, it is in any case one of the leads followed by the Nice judicial police in charge of this case. Investigators are particularly interested in the actions of a man arrested on Sunday evening, then placed in police custody. It was indeed filmed by the city’s video protection equipment leaving “the building two minutes before the cameras detected the start of a fire”.
What is intriguing indeed. But this individual, 47 years old and without a criminal record, who was to be the subject of a psychiatric expertise Monday at the end of the day, “denies any involvement in the occurrence of the facts”, explains the prosecution of Grasse.
The toll of this potentially criminal disaster remains extremely heavy. A total of three people died, two women and one man. Twenty-four hours after the events, their identification was still in progress, “the bodies having been rendered unrecognizable by the fire”.
Three other residents were seriously injured, one of whom was in a life-threatening emergency. All are hospitalized at the Pasteur University Hospital Center in Nice. Thirteen people were briefly hospitalized “following the inhalation of smoke” and relocated by the town hall, without being able to return to their building which remains logically inaccessible.
A building without structural problems, assures the mayor
The possible dilapidation of this house, like other buildings in the city center, denounced by some residents of Grasse, is just as much the subject of investigation. This Monday, Mayor Jérôme Viaud (LR) reaffirmed, at the microphone of BFMTV Nice, that the building, belonging to the private sector, had no structural problems, even if it was going to be the subject of renovations in the fall at the level of the facade and the stairwell.
Financially supported by the municipality, which has issued numerous formal notices in order to compel the private owners of the historic center affected by a high rate of poverty to make the necessary investments, several dozen rehabilitation operations have been or will be launched in the common.
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