A mother and her seven children aged two to 14 died on Monday after a faulty tumble dryer apparently set fire to their home in eastern France, authorities said.
The fire, the biggest fire involving children in France in a decade, broke out shortly after midnight at the family’s rented home in Charly-sur-Marne, a town about 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Paris in the Champagne region.
The mother and her children died from black smoke that filled the house when they were trapped in the attic, local prosecutor Julien Morino-Ros told AFP.
The origin of the fire appeared to be a malfunctioning clothes dryer in the lower floor of the home, he said.
Neighbors called the fire department to report the fire just before 1:00 a.m. (0000 GMT).
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The woman’s husband, a father of three, was saved by firefighters who lived nearby and who intervened before his friends arrived, officials said.
The father suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries and was taken to hospital.
According to the prosecutor, he had tried to put out the fire and told his wife and children – five girls and two boys – to take refuge from the fire in the converted balcony on the second floor.
– ‘We see horror’ –
But the move turned tragic as black smoke billowed up the stairs.
Firefighters struggled to get a ladder to the upper windows of the house, because of the narrow road that runs through the center of the village of 2,600 people.
Electric window blinds were closed due to a power outage triggered by a broken appliance, further hampering rescue efforts, prosecutors said.
Eight victims died of smoke poisoning, not burns, he added.
“I hope with all my heart I didn’t feel or see anything,” said Sylvie Corre, the homeowner’s wife.
“We were on the road all night and we saw horror,” he told AFP by phone.
She said her 40-year-old father worked in a small business that produced the Corre family’s champagne and was a “good worker”.
His wife, also in her 40s, is a full-time mother.
Corre said the house meets safety standards. “Obviously there will be a technical investigation and everything can be done,” he said.
Prosecutors said there were no early indications of security problems at the home despite it being “quite old”.
80 firefighters battled the blaze
It took 80 firefighters several hours to put out the fire at the house, which is located on a narrow street in the center of the village of 2,600 people.
Residents of neighboring houses damaged by the fire were evacuated from their homes and firefighters blocked off the road for onlookers.
“I just saw smoke, a lot of smoke,” said Evelyine Renaud, a local resident. “Those poor children.”
Another neighbor, who only gave her name as Nadine, said she often saw the mother picking up her children from school. “I really like that family,” he said.
Pupils and teachers at the children’s school were offered psychological support, said Catherine Albaric-Delpech, regional education officer.
“It’s not much when you consider the drama that’s going on here,” he said.
The tragedy is France’s worst since 2013, when five children between two and nine died of suffocation in an accidental fire, also in northern France.
In the most recent accident, 10 people including four children were killed in December 2022 in a seven-story building under renovation in the working-class district of Vaulx-en-Velin, near the southeastern city of Lyon.
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