11 Die, 6 Hurt as Concrete Wall Crashes Onto French Campsite

An avalanche of chunks of concrete from a 15-foot-high retaining wall on a terraced hillside crashed onto sleeping vacationers at a campground in southern France Sunday, killing 11 people and injuring six, police said.

Ten bodies were pulled from the debris and an 11th victim, one of four children to perish in the accident, died later in a hospital.

A police spokesman in the nearby town of Toulon said the 95-foot-long wall collapsed under the weight of rain-loosened mud at about 8 a.m., sending several tons of concrete cascading down on a group of trailers and tents.

Campers seized car jacks and household tools in a frenzied attempt to free the victims.

A team of 150 police and firefighters, aided by specially trained dogs, spent five hours searching through the mud and concrete.

The bodies of the victims were taken to a local school while the injured were rushed to a nearby hospital. Three people were listed as being in serious condition.

The victims all were members of a scuba diving club and their families who had come to spend the weekend at the seaside resort in southeastern France.

Witnesses said the ground suddenly began to tremble and the wall toppled over on the nearest tents and trailers without warning.

“I stepped out of my tent and saw a nightmare that lasted only a few seconds--trailers and tents thrown together in a horrible din,” one camper said. “I thought the whole hill was going to collapse.”

The accident followed four days of heavy rain in the Mediterranean coast region. Campers said they had seen cracks in the wall and an accumulation of mud nearby.

“This wall was built last winter to avoid just such an accident because children had a tendency to play on the sandy hillside and risked falling,” said Aimee Joly, director of the campground.

Relatives of some of the victims accused the owner of shoddy workmanship on the wall and shouted insults at him as the bodies were removed from the site.