As a second night of frantic hunting for survivors began Tuesday, rescue crews looking for scores of construction workers missing after an apartment complex collapsed in South Africa pulled out more survivors. It has been confirmed that at least seven people have died.
In George, around 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Cape Town on South Africa’s east coast, a five-story structure was under construction when it collapsed on Monday. According to the authorities, 26 people have already been rescued from the scene. It’s estimated that 42 more individuals are still buried beneath the rubble of the metal scaffolding and concrete.
After announcing earlier that they had established contact and were in communication with at least 11 personnel who were buried in the wreckage, rescuers expressed optimism that additional individuals would be discovered alive.
It was not immediately apparent how many of those had been saved, but according to a total given by city officials, five people were pulled out on Tuesday, joining the 21 discovered on Monday. When the building collapsed, there were seventy-five construction workers present.
As soon as one of the survivors was raised to the surface, rescuers cheered. The man was retrieved from a crevice in the wreckage and placed on a stretcher while they cried out for him to “stay with us!” Then they yelled, “You are outside now!” at him.
Although the extent of the injuries has not been updated by the authorities, they did report in the early hours following the collapse that at least 11 of the workers who were rescued suffered serious injuries.
Colin Deiner, head of the provincial Western Cape disaster management services, said the search-and-rescue operation would likely take at least three days. He said it would take at least the rest of Tuesday to bring out all 11 of the survivors they had located, which included a group of four workers trapped in what was the basement of the building.
Some of those workers had limbs under concrete slabs and couldn’t move, Deiner said.
“We are going to give it the absolute maximum time to see how many people we can rescue,” Deiner said at a news conference. “It is very, very difficult if you are working with concrete breakers and drillers close to people.”
Our main worry is when a person becomes entrapped and their body parts are crushed for several hours. Therefore, you must seek medical attention for them. As quickly as we could, we sent in our medics.
Deiner stated that the removal of concrete layers would take some time and that there might be other survivors located further within the wreckage.
The rescue operation had already lasted more than 30 hours since the building fell, with over 100 emergency services and other individuals working on the scene in shifts. Scent dogs were being used by rescuers to attempt to find the workers. Tall spotlights were installed to enable the rescuers to operate in the dark, and large cranes and other heavy lifting equipment were brought in to assist.
According to Deiner, a crucial aspect of the rescue effort involved the directive to maintain silence and turn off all equipment so that they could listen for any survivors. According to him, that’s when they found several of them.
According to Deiner, “We were actually hearing people through the rubble.”
In case more patients were rescued alive, several nearby hospitals were making room in their trauma units. In addition, more than fifty emergency personnel—including a trained team that handles rescue operations in collapsing buildings—had been dispatched from nearby towns and cities to assist.
Social workers were providing support to the workers’ friends and family who had convened at the local municipal offices, according to the George municipality.
There was no immediate word on why the building collapsed, but authorities were beginning to look into what caused the disaster and had even filed a criminal prosecution. The concrete building and metal scaffolding abruptly collapsed, sending a cloud of dust skyward over the community, according to CCTV footage from a nearby house.
Following the fall, people began to pour out of other buildings, some of them yelling and crying.
The Western Cape province’s premier, Alan Winde, announced that the police and the provincial government will both conduct investigations.
According to authorities, the engineers of the private construction company were in charge of ensuring the building site’s safety until it was finished, at which point the city would take over responsibility for inspection and clearance.
According to Winde, the rescue operation was the top priority, and investigations will follow. Officials are currently concentrating on saving lives. Right now, this is our primary focus, according to Winde.
Winde stated that the rescue operation was being briefed to the national authorities. In a statement, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his sympathies to the deceased’s families and urged inquiries into the cause of the collapse.
