Firefighters in Aix-en-Provence had to use a bit of ingenuity on Tuesday 6 August to rescue a panicked little boy, France Bleu Provence reported on Wednesday. Locked up alone in his flat, he wanted to jump from the fourth floor to join his mother. It was residents of the Cité Corsy, a working-class neighbourhood in the city of Aix-en-Provence, who alerted the emergency services.
The child who was frightened by the firefighters
The child, a seven-year-old boy, was locked inside his flat on the fourth and top floor on Tuesday. His parents were away. In a panic, he tried to get out by thinking of jumping out of the window. The fifteen or so firefighters deployed struggled to convince him that they had not come to harm him but to rescue him. Whenever they tried to approach an open window, the boy would move to another one. It proved impossible to position the airbag intended to catch him should he fall. Some firefighters had to distract the boy by talking to him through the reinforced door so that others could manage to get in through the window.
The operation lasted a good hour but ended successfully, to the applause of local residents in this neighbourhood where firefighters are sometimes pelted with stones. The child was taken into the care of the police, who contacted the mother.