An old building in the center of Toulouse collapses, no victims recorded

The collapse occurred in a pedestrian shopping street, in the heart of one of the oldest districts of France's fourth city.

The building located near the Place du Capitole, which housed nine homes and two businesses, was no longer occupied since its evacuation on Tuesday, following the collapse of a wall and the appearance of cracks.

Saturday morning, the firefighters carefully went through the rubble which littered the ground of the street, lifted beams and rubble, helped by dogs trained to detect the presence of people.

“The building had already been subject to an imminent danger order for several days,” Stéphane Lévêque, communications officer for the Haute-Garonne Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS), told AFP.

“I am happy that there are no people injured,” reacted the mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc, who visited the scene.

“The people evacuated on Tuesday were evacuated in an emergency and lost all of their belongings, they left with the minimum necessary, a bundle,” said Mr. Moudenc.

The mayor of Toulouse considered that it was "too early to say what exactly happened" and noted "reports for several months" from tenants and owners, who alerted the trustee of this building. private accommodation.

Reports which led to “an expertise carried out last week, and the conclusions were not alarmist”, specified the mayor.

At dawn on Saturday, a new evacuation took place. “twenty-six people were evacuated from nearby buildings,” explains an SDIS officer because the collapse weakened the adjoining buildings. They were taken care of by the town hall in a municipal hall.

“Viewing the video surveillance cameras allowed us to rule out the fact of having people under the rubble,” Stéphane Lévêque, SDIS communications officer, told AFP.

At the end of the morning, workers from a demolition company were busy destroying the last section of wall still standing, unstable and dangerous.

Rue Saint-Rome, a busy shopping street in the city center of Toulouse, has been cut off since Tuesday around the building in question, causing concern among traders.

It was in Michaël Drilhole's women's ready-to-wear boutique, on the ground floor, that a wall collapsed on Tuesday around 14 p.m. “I heard cracks, bricks falling, we immediately evacuated the store and the building,” testifies the merchant. “Problems have been reported for some time,” he laments.

“We have commissioned a company which is in the process of starting the clearance, because we must evacuate the rubble as quickly as possible, so as not to allow the threat to adjoining buildings to continue, and for the problem to worsen,” added the mayor. From toulouse.

The Minister Delegate in charge of Housing, Guillaume Kasbarian, praised on RMC "the anticipation of the community and State services".

This collapse comes as the Toulouse metropolitan area was mourned on Monday by the collapse of a viaduct under construction of the metro, killing a worker and seriously injuring two others.