Two die in Paris hotel fire

A couple died in a fire in a cheap hotel in Paris overnight Friday to Saturday. Their children were badly affected by smoke fumes but survived. The tragedy struck two days after the postponement of a trial over a fire which killed 17 people in a Paris hotel six years ago.

AFP/Jean Ayissi

Saturday’s deadly fire was in the Hôtel de la Fourche on a busy avenue in Paris’s XVIII arrondissement. Although the area is in the shadow of the popular tourist destination of Montmartre, several hotels house immigrant families placed there by social services as they search for permanent lodgings.

The victims’ names have not been made public but it is known that their children were aged seven and nine. They and one other person were badly affected by smoke but are out of danger, according to officials.

Another three people were saved as the flames spread along the floor and down the staircase, while the other residents had left the building before firefighters arrived.

On Thursday a trial over a notorious fire in another hotel in August 2005 was postponed until later in the year.

Members of the group which ran the hotel and a building company face charges of neglect because of the decaying state of the premises, although one report indicated that the blaze might have been caused by arson.

Seventeen people, 14 of them children, died.

The blaze was one of several that took place at about the same time which brought to light the poor living conditions of many poor, often immigrant, families in temporary lodgings.