(Cape Town) Four people died in the collapse on Monday of a building under construction in George, on the South African coast, in which around fifty workers remained trapped, the municipality announced on Tuesday.
In all, 24 people were taken out of the rubble and most of them hospitalized, the municipality announced. Four of them died from their injuries.
There are still “51 people missing”, trapped under the rubble, specifies the press release published on the night of Monday to Tuesday.
The rescuers, divided into teams, concentrated their efforts on “three distinct areas” of the rubble of the collapsed building.
“A work team of 75 people was on the site at the time of the collapse” of this building under construction, shortly after 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m. Eastern time), said the spokesperson for the municipality , Chantel Edwards.
The construction companies involved in the project are working with the authorities to establish a precise list of people who have not yet been heard from, specifies the city.
Mario Ferreira, spokesperson for the NGO Gift of the Givers, present at the scene of the accident, declared that the rescuers had “communicated with certain people under the rubble”.
The five-story building, including an underground parking lot, collapsed for reasons still undetermined.
Photos of the disaster show a flattened construction site around which numerous emergency services are positioned. The roof of the building remains visible, shaky, above a pile of rubble.
Security perimeter
Strong floodlights illuminate the site, which has been isolated by a security perimeter to protect local residents. An excavator truck was at work in the early evening.
Rescue operations continued throughout the night.
An operational post was set up to coordinate the various emergency services who went to the site, coming from several surrounding towns and even from the city of Cape Town, located more than 400 km west of the disaster.
In total, around a hundred rescuers were working at the scene of the accident.
Digging machines as well as sniffer dogs and their handlers also took to the road from Cape Town, several emergency services later learned, and arrived on site overnight, according to the municipality.
Families and loved ones were invited to meet at the town hall, near the collapsed building, where they were taken care of, in particular by social workers, the municipality said.
“Our thoughts are with the families and all those affected, who continue to wait for news of their loved ones,” Mayor Ald Van Wyk said in a statement.
George is a medium-sized town of around 160,000 inhabitants, located near the very touristy Garden Route, which runs along the south coast of the country.
Its town hall is run by the country’s leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), which also governs the Western Cape province.
reference: www.lapresse.ca