One person missing and 6 seriously injured after explosion in Paris
Rescuers combed through debris in central Paris on Thursday, a day after a powerful explosion ripped through a building on the Left Bank and injured about 50 people, several of them critically.
Authorities in Paris said one person was still missing after the blast, which rocked the French capital on Wednesday night and damaged much of the building on Rue Saint-Jacques, in the fifth arrondissement, and left a pile of charred wooden beams and stones. debris.
Official information on the identity of the victims was not readily available. But the building was home to a small fashion and art school known as the Paris American Academyand up Facebook pagethe school said its president, Peter Carman, had been hospitalized in Paris after the explosion and was in critical condition and under anesthesia.
The medical status of three of the school’s professors was still unknown, but most of the students appeared to be safe, the school said.
The explosion started a fire that hundreds of firefighters quickly had under control. Most of the injuries were minor, but the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Thursday that six people remain in critical condition.
François Braun, France’s health minister, told news channel BFMTV that some victims suffered blunt trauma after being thrown back by the blast, while others were injured by the flames.
“The most serious victims have extremely severe burns,” said Mr. Braun.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into the explosion, the origin of which was unclear. Malicious intent is not a leading theory, but authorities have not confirmed suspicions that a gas leak was responsible.
Many apartment buildings in Paris use gas for heating and other purposes, and while deadly explosions due to leaks are uncommon, they are not unheard of.
In 2019, a gas explosion tore through a bakery in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. That blast killed four people, including two firefighters, and injured dozens more, raising questions about the safety of the French capital’s gas infrastructure. That came three years later an explosion caused by a gas leak in the sixth arrondissement, the roof of an apartment building tore and injured 17 people.
During the rain on Rue Saint-Jacques on Thursday, security forces set up a perimeter around the area of the blast, shocking Parisians after the initial noise and chaos sparked flashbacks to the deadly terrorist attacks that hit the city in 2015.
Some people who lived in several neighboring apartment buildings were still unable to return after being evacuated as a precaution.
Florence Berthout, the mayor of the Fifth Arrondissement, told BFMTV that three children were among those slightly injured, but that 12 students who would have been on the scene had left that afternoon to visit an exhibition with their professor.
The Paris American Academy is a small school founded in 1965 for students pursuing a career in art or fashion. It describes itself as “the French capital’s first bilingual design school, located in the Latin Quarter of Paris.”
Nine of the students at the Paris American Academy were from Kent State University in Ohio and were in the French capital for a month-long fashion class. All those students are safe and will return to the United States a few days early, the university said in a rack.
“We are grateful and relieved to know that our Kent State students are safe and responsible,” said Kent State University president Todd Diacon. “This incident occurred later in the day and the students had left the building for an off-site activity. Our thoughts are with the other persons injured in the explosion.”