"we are all in shock," says a resident

A serious fire hit Thursday evening a building Aubervilliers in Seine-Saint-Denis. The record is very heavy: the death of a mother and her three children and nine wounded people. The fire left in the afternoon, and thirty vehicles and a hundred firefighters were mobilized. Europe 1 went to the scene to meet the witnesses: they recount the tragedy

Alerted by the cries of a child . When the fire took place around 17 hours on the 17th floor of the building, Lena was at home, two floors down. What alerted him was a burning smell but also the cries of a child coming from above. "The boy went to the window of his room to say that there was fire at home, so my eldest son went up, he broke down the door and took him out," she says. "We just had time to put on our sandals, go down and we called the firemen at the same time," she adds to the microphone of Europe 1. This resident of the HLM tower was not afraid because she thought "it was a 5-10 minute thing".

"It climbed up to three stories" . The fire was actually fierce and the firemen took three hours to control the flames. 15-year-old Dylan witnessed the devastating fire at the foot of the building: "It started in the bedrooms, then, through the kitchen, ash came down on a pot of flowers that began to burn and the flowerpot, it went up to three floors, it made a big fire ".

"She was pregnant." The residents of the neighborhood of La Frette did not remain inactive: they drummed the doors to alert residents who remained on the spot. Unfortunately, when the fire was over, firefighters discovered the bodies of a woman and three children on the 17th floor. Draman, a neighbor of this family, has trouble realizing: "she was pregnant, the dad was not there, he had gone to work, it touches us". The inhabitants will be able to return to their homes this evening once the place is secure but it will not be easy to believe a mother: "we are all in shock," she estimates.