Eleven dead in fire at French holiday home

Eleven people died after a fire tore through a holiday home for people in eastern France.

The blaze broke out before early on Wednesday as the holiday-goers with disabilities and their carers were still asleep in the two-storey building in the town of Wintzenheim, about 70 km south of Strasbourg.

“We think we have located the 11 bodies,” a firefighter told Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne as she visited the site of the incident.

Eight bodies have been found and three more were thought to have been located under the rubble.

The holiday home was rented for the summer by two charities that take care of people with learning disabilities, local media said. Twenty-eight people were staying there, and 17 of them managed to escape the fire.

“A few of the people who were (sleeping) on the first floor managed to escape, but most of those who got out were on the ground floor,” Lieutenant Colonel Philippe Hauwiller, who headed the rescue operations, told reporters earlier in the day.

The fire destroyed about two-thirds of the building.

An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the blaze.

Nathalie Kielwasser, a deputy prosecutor for the region, told reporters it had likely been a low level fire that had burnt for a while before growing bigger and tearing the house down.

FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE NEWS

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Chronicles Live is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – chronicleslive.com. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.

Leave a Comment