Paris gas leak explosion kills 2 firefighters, injures dozens more

The scene of a gas leak explosion in Paris, France, Saturday, Jan. 12, 2019. — (Image credit: Matthieu Croissandeau/The Associated Press)

Two firefighters were killed and at least three dozen people injured, about a third of them seriously, by an explosion thought to be caused by a gas leak in Paris Saturday morning.

The firefighters were on the scene responding to the leak when the explosion occurred in a bakery. The blast damaged a number of nearby storefronts, flipped at least one car, and filled the street with debris and broken glass.

"I was sleeping and woke up by the blast wave," said a neighbor named Claire Sallavuard. "All the windows in the apartment exploded, doors were blown off their hinges. I had to walk on the door to leave the room. All the kids were panicking; they couldn't get out of their room"

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.