One person died and around 47 workers were trapped under rubble after a building under construction collapsed on Monday afternoon in George, on the South African coast, more than 400 km east of Cape Town, Le Figaro reports.
“A work crew of approximately 70 people was on site at the time of the collapse” of the building under construction, city hall spokeswoman Chantel Edwards said in a statement. Of those, 22 people were hospitalized, she added, without giving further information on the condition of the approximately 48 people still under the rubble.
Mario Ferreira, spokesman for the NGO Gift of the Givers, present at the scene of the accident, told AFP that rescuers had “communicated with some of the people under the rubble”. The five-story building, which included an underground car park, collapsed in the early afternoon for reasons that have yet to be determined.
Photos released by the municipality show a flattened construction site, where numerous emergency services are present. According to Mario Ferreira, some of the evacuated people are “seriously injured”.
