(George) Hope is fading to find another 39 South African workers, trapped in the rubble of a building under construction which collapsed on Monday, but rescuers are redoubling their efforts, aware that this window is crucial.
Posted at 7:32 a.m.
Of the 75 people who were in the building at the time of its unexplained collapse on Monday shortly after 2 p.m. in George, on the south coast of the country, 36 were able to be freed from the rubble, seven of whom died, according to the municipality.
More than 200 rescuers have been probing and cutting through tons of concrete, continuously for nearly 48 hours, in the hope of finding other survivors.
The authorities recalled on Wednesday that it is generally in the first three days that rescue operations allow survivors to be found, which still leaves more than 24 hours of hope. Then, finding the living is more and more of a miracle.
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, two other people were extracted from the rubble, to the applause of rescuers, and hospitalized, AFP noted.
The first was extricated from a hole dug in the rubble and placed on a stretcher. Another was recovered and wrapped in a blanket, under the gaze of dozens of neighbors and relatives, behind the security perimeter.
Moses Malala, foreman on the site, was hospitalized on Monday, but returned to the site a few hours later to help get his “guys” out of the rubble.
He said he heard a terrible noise while working on the roof, then slipped down the slope and landed on the side of the construction site.
“My foot started to slip. I was at the top of the roof and I started going down the slope,” he said, claiming to have seen his “guys going down as quickly as possible to the ground floor because the building was starting to fall ‘one side first’.
Since Monday “I have been here, on the site, we want to free our loved ones, our brothers and sisters. Some we find alive, others are dead,” he said.
Tuesday evening, religious leaders and simple believers went to pray at the town hall, where the relatives of the missing are feverishly waiting for news, out of sight.
Men, women and children sang multi-part choruses, typically South African, to comfort them. “We came to pray for those caught in the accident, but also to provide spiritual support to the families,” explained Reverend Siyanda Sijela.
