Four people died in the collapse of a building under construction in George, on the South African coast, Monday May 6, 2024. Around fifty workers remain trapped, the municipality announced on Tuesday.
In all, 24 people were taken out of the rubble and most of them hospitalized, the City announced in a press release, affirming that four of them succumbed to their injuries.
It remains “51 people missing”, trapped under the rubble, also specifies the press release published on the night of Monday to Tuesday.
The rescuers, divided into teams, concentrate their efforts on “three distinct zones” rubble of the collapsed building.
75 people were on the site
“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, said municipality spokesperson 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, told AFP that the rescuers had “communicated with some people under the rubble”.
The five-story building, including an underground parking lot, collapsed for reasons that are still unclear.
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.
A large emergency system deployed
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.
