Cause of Paris death blaze probed

Saturday, August 27, 2005; Posted: 10:40 a.m. EDT (14:40 GMT)

Rescuers rush an injured victim of the blaze to hospital.

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Children die in burning apartment building. (1:49)

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• Paris immigrants living dangerously

• Paris hotel fire toll tops 20

• 'Children thrown from windows'

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PARIS, France (AP) -- Scorched walls and flower boxes tossed from balconies in the rescue were the only visible testament to the tragedy. But hours after the 200 firefighters had extinguished the blaze in the rundown building, sobs still pierced the Paris night, heavy with an acrid smell and a sense of betrayal.

For the second time in four months, Africans who had crowded into substandard housing paid dearly for their decision to immigrate to France -- with their lives.

Seventeen people -- including at least six children -- died in the fire early Friday, four months after two dozen immigrants, most from Africa, were killed in a blaze in a budget hotel. The toll underscored the housing problem in pricey Paris and drew angry calls for authorities to take action.

Some 400 people demonstrated Friday night in front of the building on a main boulevard in southeast Paris demanding that empty buildings be requisitioned to house the needy.

"More than ever, housing must be a national priority," Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said. Paris has 110,000 unanswered requests for low-cost housing, according to associations working with the needy.

The fire started under the ground-floor stairwell at about midnight and raged for three hours in the seven-story building on a major boulevard in southeast Paris, prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said. A small, open window at the top of the building "created a wind tunnel that turned the stairwell into a veritable chimney," he said.

In addition to the 17 killed, another 23 were injured, two seriously.

People jumped from open windows to escape the flames while others were choked by the smoke as they slept. More than 200 firefighters fought the blaze.

The outside walls of the upper floors were scorched, although the building remained standing.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy pointed to overcrowding as a reason for the high death toll, and ordered an inventory of dangerous and overcrowded buildings as demands to remedy the situation rose from all quarters.

"This dreadful catastrophe plunges all of France into mourning," President Jacques Chirac said in a statement.

District Mayor Serge Blisko said the building was overcrowded, and residents spoke of three-room apartments with 12 people. The building housed about 30 adults and 100 children.

Angry African immigrants surrounded Housing Minister Jean-Louis Borloo at the site of the fire, demanding help.

Oumar Cisse, who like many of the other residents was from Mali, was awakened by the cries of children and adults and rushed to his second-floor window.

People "jumped out the windows. They didn't care about dying," the 71-year-old said. Some of the victims were asphyxiated and others were burned.

The cause of the blaze was not immediately determined and a criminal investigation was opened, the prosecutor told reporters. Investigators quickly dismissed a short-circuit as the cause because there were no electrical elements where the blaze started.

"No one cause appears logical," Marin said.

Former Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, said the country has a "collective" responsibility for such disasters and called for a more "heartfelt" approach toward poor immigrants arriving in France.

"You can't respond to immigration by closing the door," he said on RTL radio.

SOS-Racism, an organization that combats discrimination, called for urgent measures "to house foreign families on our soil with dignity and decency." Other groups demanded that vacant buildings be requisitioned and more subsidized housing be built.

In 1991, immigrants and others expelled from lodgings with nowhere to go camped out for four months under tents in the 13th district, not far from the building that caught fire Friday. Many of the building's residents were among the tent protesters 14 years ago.

The building, on the corner of a major boulevard in the city's 13th district, near the Place d'Italie, housed immigrants, mainly from Senegal and Mali, placed there by humanitarian organizations. The lodging was meant to be temporary, but many had lived there for years, underscoring the plight of poor immigrants in expensive Paris.

The building was requisitioned by the state in 1991 to help house immigrants in a city with soaring rents. It was managed by France-Euro Habitat, an association that works with Emmaus, a worldwide humanitarian organization.

Cisse, who served as a go-between with the management association, said the building was infested with rats and mice. Others reported leaks and hallways without electric lights. suggesting that the wiring could have been faulty.

"It was totally unfit," said Cisse, who had lived there for nearly 15 years.

However, Martin Hirsch, an official of Emmaus France, rebutted charges that the building was overcrowded. It wasn't like places "where they stuff people in rooms to make money," he said.

In April, a fire at a crowded budget hotel near the Paris Opera killed 24 people, also mostly from Africa, and many were children. That fire was apparently ignited by a candle that had been knocked over.