Emergency services workers found a body in the rubble of a building that collapsed in Paris six days ago after an explosion and a fire. A search for a missing woman had been under way since the blast last Wednesday, but a source told AFP that the body was too charred to be immediately identified. The missing woman is a teacher at the Paris American Academy fashion school on the city's Left Bank, AFP reported last week. <i>S</i>he had been teaching at the academy for 20 years and was on the third floor of the building at the time of the blast, <i>Le Parisien</i> reported. The cause of the blast is still unknown but witnesses reported smelling gas before the explosion. The head of the academy, Peter Carman, was among the worst hurt, <i>Le Parisien</i> reported. Mr Carman rushed to cut off the power supply when a smell of gas spread through the building. The blast and fire just before 5pm on Wednesday shook the busy Rue Saint-Jacques, demolishing the 17th-century building, which was a listed historic monument. Prosecutors said 58 people were hurt in the blast, four of them with life-threatening injuries. Students were out at the time watching a Paris Fashion Week show, preventing larger numbers of casualties. Paris prosecutors are investigating whether the blast was the result of failure to observe safety norms. The search of the destroyed building was halted over the weekend while a neighbouring building, which was in danger of collapse, was stabilised. Images last week showed wreckage littering the area around the building, as the flames smouldered. Several witnesses told AFP at the scene they had heard “a giant explosion”. Windows as far as 400 metres away were shattered. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo assembled a crisis unit and wrote on Twitter: “My thoughts go first and foremost to the victims and their loved ones.” The “violent” fire that broke out after the explosion has now been “contained”, Paris Police Chief Laurent Nunez said at the scene. Mr Nunez said that “work is still taking place under the rubble” to find any other victims. The firefighters “prevented the spread of the fire to two adjoining buildings which were seriously destabilised by the explosion” and these buildings “were evacuated”, he said. Ms Hidalgo said the noise of the “quite enormous” explosion spread “in part of the district”. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin asked on Twitter for people to stay away from the area to avoid hindering the huge number of firefighters and police. Mr Darmanin cut short a visit to the eastern city of Nancy to head to the scene. Photos taken at the site showed tall flames and smoke billowing from the building, at Place Alphonse-Laveran, close to the Luxembourg Gardens. The area is at the edge of the Latin Quarter, a top tourism area in the French capital. A resident told AFP that he “heard a huge explosion which made the windows vibrate”. “I thought it was a bombing," he said. "It echoed in the apartment. I had 10 seconds of great concern. Many people were at the windows." Another witness, working at the nearby Catholic education secretariat SGEC, said: “There was a big noise. I fell off my chair during a meeting, and so did others.” He said one of his colleagues had noticed a strong smell of gas in the street right before the explosion. But officials said they did not have enough to determine the cause of the blast with certainty. There have been several incidents of gas-related blasts in the French capital. A massive blast rocked Paris in January 2019, when a suspected leak in a buried gas pipe destroyed a building on the Rue de Trevise in the 9th arrondissement, killing four people including two firefighters. The shock wave blew out scores of nearby windows, and dozens of families were forced from their homes for months. Much of the street still remains off limits four years after the disaster. Paris city hall has been charged with involuntary manslaughter over that blast, and legal wrangling over the exact cause continues.
