(Villa Gesell) One person was killed, one injured, and at least seven others are believed to be trapped under the rubble of a ten-story building, apparently under unauthorized construction, which collapsed during the night from Monday to Tuesday in Villa Gesell, a seaside resort south of Buenos Aires.
Published at 3:29 p.m. Updated at 5:23 p.m.
Fernando LEGARRETA Agence France-Presse
Nearly 300 rescuers, helped by drones and probe dogs with cameras and microphones, were still working in the afternoon, 15 hours after the start of operations, to carefully clear the rubble, AFP noted.
Early Tuesday morning, they found the body of an octogenarian, as well as a seriously injured septuagenarian who was airlifted, Javier Alonso, security minister of Buenos Aires province, where Villa Gesell is located, told reporters. .
The building “imploded, it fell on itself. The last three floors of the ten in the tower fell on the adjacent building,” Mr. Alonso told AFP. “The neighbors heard a crack, a vibration in the ground and a few minutes later, it collapsed.”
These first two victims quickly found lived in the adjacent building, 25% crushed by the collapse of the building located a few minutes walk from the beach of Villa Gesell.
According to the municipality, the building, normally an apart-hotel, collapsed around 1 a.m. “Between 7 and 9 people”, in particular “workers who worked on an illegal construction site”, “without municipal authorization”, could be among the missing people.
Minister Alonso confirmed this estimate of “between 7 and 9” people missing, after several hours of uncertainty over the real number of people potentially under the rubble, because the building at the time of the collapse “did not function as a hotel “.
« Modification de structure »
On the mountain of rubble, the dogs climbed the stacked floors, and the rescuers moved with measured steps for “a job that is done by hand, because there are people underneath, and we cannot move with them.” machines,” Hugo Piriz, commander of the fire brigade, explained to AFP.
This is how, on Tuesday morning, they recovered the injured victim: “We were silent, we heard the sound of a blow on a pipe, then as we approached we could hear the voice. Hard work lasting several hours,” underlined Hugo Piriz.
Rescue operations “are going to be slow”, because several layers of rubble must be removed, warned Minister Alonso, insisting however that in similar accidents, “people have been found alive up to a week later”.
“Time passes, but I want my little one alive, I want my son alive, whole! », expressed alarm to journalists Silvana Perhauc, who presented herself as the mother of one of the missing people.
The construction site of the “Dubrovnik Hotel” was stopped for the first time in August by the municipality. Superficial work (painting, floor covering) had since been re-authorized, but “structural modifications would have been carried out irregularly and illegally in the part which collapsed”, underlined the municipality.
The president of the Villa Gesell hoteliers’ association indicated on the TN channel that he had visited the hotel ten days ago, and noted that the owners had “drilled the slab of a second floor”, to install a elevator.
The building site manager and two masons were placed in police custody as part of the investigation which is beginning, according to judicial sources cited by the daily La Nacion.
Villa Gesell is a seaside resort of around 40,000 inhabitants, 350 km south of Buenos Aires, on the Atlantic coast, which lives mainly from tourism, and which swells with tens of thousands of vacationers every summer, particularly a young clientele. and festive.
