Explosion at Paris American Academy international arts and design school, dozens injured

A powerful gas explosion at the Paris Academy which houses an international fashion and design school, in the centre of the French capital, has left 37 people injured, as per reports from several news media.

The explosion happened on Wednesday afternoon and severely damaged one of the school’s buildings. No students were present as it was after class hours.

The search continued on Thursday morning for a person still missing in the rubble. The explosion left at least four people severely injured.

"The number of absolute emergencies had not stabilised overnight", the Paris public prosecutor's office told French press agency AFP on Thursday morning. "The total number of victims is still around fifty".

Paris American Academy, a fashion and design school, is located in Paris’ fifth quarter, also known as the Latin Quarter.

Barricades erected on Saint-Jacques street, in front of the Maison des Mines student residence, kept onlookers and journalists away from the collapsed building, in front of which rubble was piling up.

Explosion destroys building Paris American Academy, leaves 37 injured

There were no vehicles in the street, and only a water hose was intermittently activated by the fire brigade to spray the ruins of the destroyed building. The shops in the street were open and people were moving around.

Damage was reported over a wide area. A caretaker in the street perpendicular to Saint-Jacques street, Violeta Garesteaw throws broken glass into a dustbin on the pavement. "Many of the windows in the building have been broken, I'm cleaning up in the inner courtyard and we've already put up tarpaulins because it's raining", she told AFP.

"It was terrible yesterday, I thought it was an earthquake. It was shaking,” she told AFP.

The incident occurred shortly before 5pm in a building housing the private fashion and design school.

Several witnesses and local residents interviewed by AFP said they smelled gas and heard a "big explosion".

"One of my colleagues smelled a strong odour of gas and went to look under the porch to see what was going on", Philippe Delorme, France’s secretary general of catholic education, whose premises are in the immediate vicinity of the collapsed building, told French radio station RMC on Thursday morning.

"Just as the accountant was dialling the telephone number" of the gas supplier's emergency service, "the explosion occurred", he continued.

The Paris public prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into "unintentional injuries caused by a manifestly deliberate breach of a duty of care or safety". “Initial indications (...) lead us to confirm that the explosion originated in the building", Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau said at the scene.

"We are obviously relying on the victims in relative emergency to assist us with the initial elements of investigation and give us an understanding of what may have happened", she added. The Paris judicial police have been called in.

The mayor of the fifth quarter, Florence Berthout, told BFMTV that she had been "very frightened last night" because "young people were looking for their mothers who were on the site of this American fashion school".

"We always fear the worst in such cases", she continued, welcoming the fact that the mother had finally been identified at the Percy military hospital in Clamart, where she had been admitted after the explosion.

Some 270 Paris firefighters prevented the fire from spreading to two adjoining buildings, which were seriously destabilised by the explosion" and "have been evacuated", the Prefect of the city Police, Laurent Nuñez, said in the early evening on Wednesday.