'A fire monster that swallows everything in its path, that destroys the foundation floor by floor' raps Médine, a French hip hop artist who wrote a song about what happened to Wahabu's apartment block on August 26, 2005. Seventeen people died in the fire, fourteen of them were children.
The tragedy did not stand alone: four months earlier and four days later two other appartment blocks caught fire in Paris, with a total of thirty two deaths.
Three people on 9 m2
A 9m2 room, shared by three people
After his appartment burnt down, Wahabu decides to do something about the unsafety of immigrant housing blocks in Paris, and sets up an organization that installs fire extinguishers in unsafe appartments. The living conditions of some of the places he visits are poor.
Three people living on nine square metres are no exception, and the little rooms are jam-packed with belongings. Cooking sets stand next to bunk beds, a flammable construction.
Wahabu: 'If we can stop our activities in ten years, then our mission is accomplished.' If you see how little the housing situation has changed since the fires in 2005, that seems to be an optimistic estimation.
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