The upper floor terrace collapsed onto the street level terrace which itself collapsed onto the basement.
AFP
Two young German tourists, a Senegalese and a Spanish employee died in the collapse Thursday evening of a bar-restaurant located on the seafront of Palma de Mallorca, in the very touristy Spanish archipelago of the Balearic Islands where the season is already in full swing. full.
“The victims are two German women aged 20 and 30, a Spanish employee aged 23 and a Senegalese man aged 44,” a police spokesperson told AFP on Friday. Of the sixteen injured in this accident, eight, of Dutch nationality, are still hospitalized, declared the mayor of Palma, Antonio Jiménez. “They are out of danger,” he assured.
According to the town hall, the two young German women were on vacation on the island while the Senegalese man, who was widely talked about in the local media in 2017 for having saved a bather from drowning, and the Spanish employee of the bar- restaurant resided on the island, the main one of the archipelago. A minute of silence was observed in the city this morning.
A noise like a bomb
The noise caused by the collapse sounded like “a bomb,” Santiago Aranda, a witness to the incident, told Trece television. He was then walking his dog and said he went to help the emergency services. “It was very difficult to try to calm down and get away from people who are speaking to you in another language,” he added, saying he did not “understand and speak German.”
This three-level building, the Medusa Beach Club, is a bar-restaurant-club with a first floor with a terrace and a bar in the basement. It is located on a seaside promenade in the tourist area of Playa de Palma, south of Palma. The place was very busy at the time of the tragedy, while the tourist season is already in full swing in the Balearic Islands, an archipelago also including the islands of Ibiza, Menorca and Formentera.
Fearing that other victims could have been trapped, firefighters searched for part of the night under the rubble, before ending the search. According to Eder García, Palma fire chief, most of the victims were found in the vaulted basement.
A structure too old
Authorities were seeking to determine the cause of the accident on Friday. “The circumstances are currently under investigation,” but “what we know for sure is that the first floor collapsed and caused the floor” of the ground floor to collapse onto the basement, explained Eder García.
“The terrace of the upper floor collapsed onto the terrace” at street level which itself collapsed “on the basement,” confirmed Santiago Aranda, the witness, reporting having heard “some screams, crying” coming from the basement. “Everything suggests” that the collapse is linked to “the age of the structure and the excess weight,” continued Eder García.
In 2009, the collapse of a three-story building in Palma de Mallorca killed seven people, including two Germans and three Colombians.
(afp)
