The firefighters have found nine corpses and they are looking for two other missing among the charred remains of the hostel in the Alsatian city of Wintzenheimeastern France, who suffered this Wednesday morning a violent fire.

“We are looking for the remains of the people who could not leave the building. We have found nine and two are missing,” firefighter lieutenant colonel Philippe Hauwiller, head of the rescue operation, told the press. Hauwiller explained that the fire completely burned a large part of the building and that the second floor collapsedwhich makes the debris “unstable” and complicate operations Search for the last two bodies.

It was the collapse that caused the victims, since the fire “did not generate technical difficulties for its extinction,” said the fire official. Building welcomed the 28 members of a group of people with mild mental disabilities and their monitorscoming from the city of Nancy (northeast), and who were on vacation.

17 were able to escape from the center

A total of 17 people were able to escape, one of them with very serious injuries. The fire started around 06:30 local time (04:30 GMT) on Wednesday and spread rapidly. until burning 300 of the 500 square meters of the buildinghas reported the prefecture (government delegation) of the Upper Rhine department.

The firefighters sent an important device of 76 people, eleven vehicles and an emergency medical post, which was joined by forty gendarmes. Drones were later deployed to help locate the victims. The Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, and the Minister for Solidarity and Families, Aurore Bergé, went to the scene of the accident to follow the tasks of recovering the bodies and talk to the families of the victims.

The authorities also set up a psychological care center for family members and survivors. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin praised on X (Twitter) the “quick and courageous intervention of the fire brigade“. The shelter is part of the ITEP network, whose centers welcome young people, adolescents and young adults with mental or intellectual development problems.