Cape Town, South Africa — Rescue crews searching for dozens of construction workers missing after a an apartment complex collapsed in South Africa pulled out more survivors Tuesday as they entered a second night of desperate work to find anyone alive among the wreckage. At least seven people have been confirmed dead.
Authorities said 26 workers had been rescued from the site where the five-storey building collapsed on Monday while under construction in George, about 250 miles east of Cape Town, on the south coast of South- africa An additional 42 people were believed to be still buried in the rubble of concrete and metal scaffolding.
Rescuers hoped more people would be found alive after earlier saying they had contacted at least 11 workers trapped in the rubble and were communicating with them.
It was not immediately known how many of them had been rescued, but five survivors emerged on Tuesday, adding to the 21 found on Monday, according to a count provided by city officials. There were 75 construction workers on site when the building collapsed.
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Rescuers erupted in applause as one of the survivors surfaced. They shouted at the man to “stay with us!” as he was lifted from a hollow in the wreckage and placed on a stretcher. Then they yelled at him, “You're out now!”
Authorities have not released updated details on the extent of the injuries, but said in the first hours after the collapse that at least 11 of the rescued workers had serious injuries.
Colin Deiner, head of the Western Cape's provincial 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 extricate the 11 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 their limbs under concrete slabs and couldn't move, Deiner said.
“We're going to give it the absolute maximum time to see how many people we can rescue,” Deiner told a news conference. “It's very, very difficult if you're working with concrete breakers and drills near people.”
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“Our biggest concern is entrapment for many hours, when a person's body parts are compressed. So we need to get medical help for them. We've got our doctors in as soon as possible.”
Deiner said it was possible there were more survivors deeper in the wreckage and a process of removing layers of concrete would begin in time.
More than 100 emergency services and other staff had been working at the site in shifts. Rescuers used sniffer dogs to try to locate the workers. Large cranes and other heavy lifting equipment were brought in to help and high floodlights were erected to allow rescuers to work in the dark.
Deiner said a critical part of the rescue operation came when they had ordered everyone to be quiet and shut down the machinery so they could hear the survivors. That's when they located some of them, he said.
“We were actually hearing people through the debris,” Deiner said.
Several local hospitals were making room in their trauma units in anticipation of more people making it out alive. More than 50 emergency crews from other towns and cities had also been brought in to help, including a specialist team dealing with rescue operations in collapsed structures.
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Family and friends of the workers had gathered at nearby municipal offices and were being supported by social workers, George Township said.
Authorities were launching investigations into what caused the tragedy and police opened a criminal case, but there was no immediate information on why the building collapsed. CCTV footage from a nearby house showed the concrete structure and metal scaffolding suddenly collapsing, sending a plume of dust rising over the neighbourhood.
People ran out of other buildings after the collapse, with some of them screaming and shouting.
Alan Winde, the premier of the Western Cape province, said there would be investigations by both the provincial government and the police.
Officials said that under city law, the private construction company's engineers were responsible for the safety of the work until completion, when it would be turned over to the city for inspection and cleanup. .
Winde said the priority was the rescue effort and investigations would develop after that.
“Right now, officials are focused on saving lives. That's our highest priority at this stage,” Winde said.
The national government was being informed about the rescue operation, Winde said. The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has released a statement in which he expresses his condolences to the families of the victims and has also called for an investigation into the cause of the collapse.
