“She was not supposed to work that afternoon…”, confides her husband to the Parisian. More than 24 hours after the explosion, one person is still missing. The last provisional assessment of the destruction of the building, communicated Thursday morning by the Paris prosecutor’s office, reported “six victims in absolute urgency, and still around fifty victims in total”.
According to several concordant sources, it is a woman in her fifties, a sewing teacher at the Paris American Academy for twenty years. Since Wednesday evening, she has given no sign of life. One of the victims of the explosion is also said to have confirmed her presence on the scene even though she was not on the schedule.
Concern grows among loved ones
The explosion at 277 rue Saint-Jacques in the 5th arrondissement of Paris occurred on Wednesday shortly before 5 p.m., in a higher education establishment, the Paris American Academy, emptied of its students who had left to attend a parade of the Fashion Week. In this building dating from the 17th century, a gas leak could be the cause of the disaster.
On the side of the victim’s family, concern is growing. Her husband, questioned by The Parisian Thursday, is still pending: “The investigators had the list and photos of the victims they were looking for, and they found everyone except my wife. She’s nowhere.” For the time being, the emergency services, equipped with drones with thermal cameras, are still hard at work trying to find her among the rubble. And the security perimeter is still in place this Friday morning.