“It’s really tragic, it’s a shock, my legs are shaking,” he added. “We all know each other.”
Vaulx-en-Velin, northeast of Lyon, France’s third-largest city, is a working-class neighborhood and one of the poorest towns in the region, with a poverty rate of 33 percent, according to official statistics.
The authorities had already taken steps to renovate both the building where the fire took place and the surrounding area, Le Mas du Taureau, and there were plans for more improvements. Le Mas du Taureau was the site of major urban riots in the 1990s.
The Lyon Metropolis, a local governing body that Vaulx-en-Velin is a part of, said in a statement that the building where the fire took place was one of 13 “decrepit” apartment complexes in the area.
Local authorities had approved a plan in January to “rehabilitate and assist in the management of each of the condominiums,” the statement said, but no connection was made to the condition of the building and the fire on Friday morning.
During a visit to Vaulx-en-Velin in July, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne promised that the government would do more to renovate low-income neighbourhoods. cities, marred by neglect and unemployment, and often home to large immigrant communities.
Olivier Klein, France’s housing minister, said on Friday that emergency renovations had been carried out in 2019, but he did not specify what had been done, and he said it was too early to say whether the building’s condition had played a role in the fire.
“This is a neighborhood where urban redevelopment is underway,” Mr Klein told reporters in Vaulx-en-Velin.