Fire ravages iconic French radio building

A fire broke out today at the "Maison de la Radio" ("Radio house"), a vast and iconic circular building in Paris housing several media operations, but was quickly brought under control.
Employees were evacuated and there were no reports of injuries from the fire which began on the upper floors of the building, where extensive renovation work is taking place.
"The fire is out," fire service chief Gabriel Plus told reporters around three hours after it broke out.
Thick black smoke was seen billowing from several windows on the upper floors of the building and the Paris fire service deployed 16 fire engines and 60 firefighters to the scene.

Plus said the thickness of the smoke was likely due to the incineration of construction materials used for the building's renovation.
Two radio stations, France Info and France Inter, stopped transmission due to the blaze but restarted shortly afterwards.

"I heard a big noise, like an explosion," said Faouzi Zenassi, head of a team of construction workers on the site.
Firefighters put the explosions down to the windows blowing out under the force of the inferno.
"We don't yet know how bad the damage is, but it seems considerable," French President Francois Hollande told reporters at a joint news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The fire is an "extremely traumatic event" in central Paris, Hollande said, adding that it was a "symbolic" building.
"I am watching this very carefully," he added.
The 50-year-old building is an iconic structure in the posh 16th district of Paris that has been undergoing significant renovation since 2009.
The renovation work is the largest project on an occupied building in the whole country and is due to finish in 2016, at a cost of 350 million euros (USD 437 million).
Journalists inside the building said that no alarm had sounded. "For a quarter of an hour, we were saying 'what shall we do'?" said Isabelle Labeyrie, from France Info radio station.

"While we were waiting for the order to evacuate, we took pictures," she added.