Protesting these suspensions, a Deputy from the area pleaded in the French National Assembly: “Let the dead sleep in peace.” But France-Soir, a leading French daily, in a front page editorial replied: “We are not trying to disturb the dead. Fists were literally fried against the locked door.” Government investigations revealed such criminal neglect of fire laws that the local mayor and another official were suspended by the French government.
Bodies, 145 of them, “in ghastly contortions of agony. WHAT the firemen of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont saw when they managed to pry open a padlocked emergency exit of a local dance hall caused two of them to faint.
