As a thick plume of black smoke rose from his burning apartment, a 10-year-old boy hung a smaller boy from an open third-floor window, clutching the back of his shirt. The apartment’s balcony was engulfed in flames, and the two children seemed trapped.
Then, as viewers yelled, the older boy dropped the 3-year-old younger into the arms of a group of adults 30 feet below. They caught him.
Moments later, the older boy climbed out the window and jumped into the outstretched arms of those below. Both children were unharmed.
The dramatic rescue that took place on Tuesday in the French city of Grenoble was captured on video and generated great admiration for the quick thinking of children and the actions of good Samaritans who broke their fall.
Two of the six adults who appeared to have participated in the rescue broke their arms, according to French news reports. They have all been hailed as heroes.
“It is together that they could save the children,” Éric Piolle, mayor of Grenoble, said in a statement, praising the “heroic rescue.”
According to news reports, at least 17 people were injured in the fire in Grenoble, a city of 160,000 inhabitants, and the cause is still under investigation. The two children were hospitalized for smoke inhalation according to the French media.
As for the rescuers, they were humble about their roles.
“The children gave us the courage, because they decided to jump,” Athoumani Walid, one of the men whose arm was broken, told France 24.
It is not the first time that a dramatic rescue of a child hanging from an apartment has been captured in France. In May 2018, Mamoudou Gassama, a 22-year-old Malian man, scaled four floors of a Paris building to save a young boy hanging from a balcony. Hailed as the “Spider-Man of 18,” by the district where the rescue took place, Mr. Gassama joined the city’s fire brigade after he was granted legal residence in the country.
