Early this Wednesday morning, firefighters located a third body among the rubble of the building under construction that collapsed around 1:00 p.m. in the center of Madrid, located at number 4 Calle de las Hileras, near the Ópera metro, as Madrid Emergency sources have confirmed to Efe. Hours earlier, the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez Almeida, had confirmed the discovery of two other deceased. Of the four missing people, three are known to be men and one woman. One of the bodies recovered is that of a man, but the gender of the others has not been confirmed.
Regarding the possibility of there being survivors,. The foreman of the work, a rehabilitation that had been carried out for at least four months to build a four-star hotel, has assured that at the time of the accident between 30 and 40 people could have been working on the site.
After hours of stabilizing the façade, the Madrid firefighters began the search for the missing people around 6:30 p.m. with the trained dogs of the Municipal Police and those of the . In addition, the Municipal Police Air Support Unit has brought drones to collect images of the interior to facilitate rescue efforts. Since then, firefighters have also been manually removing the debris to reach the bodies, as reported by Martínez Almeida.
“The floor of the sixth floor collapsed and this caused all the floors to fall and reach the ground floor,” the mayor explained about the trigger for the event, the causes of which are still unknown. One of the people who is still missing was on the ground floor at the time of the collapse. Psychologists from the emergency services attend to the relatives of the missing from the early hours of the afternoon.
The mayor, who arrived at the scene of the accident after interrupting a trip to London (United Kingdom), also clarified that the work had been licensed since February of this year, as reflected on the Madrid City Council website. “The papers were in order from an urban planning point of view and they were carrying out the reform in accordance with the authorization that had been granted,” he noted. According to the councilor, the residents of the buildings adjacent to the demolished block will be able to return to their homes throughout the night.
Initially, the workers explained that the missing woman was “the architect”, but sources from the firefighters have subsequently assured that she is an administrative worker, named Laura and about 30 years old, who was in the building at the time of the collapse. The mayor has not clarified the woman’s position, but he has clarified that she had “responsibility in the work.”
18 fire crews from the Madrid City Council and a device from Samur with 13 units have traveled to the site. One of the injured was taken to hospital with a broken leg and the others only had minor injuries and were treated by psychologists after the incident. shockas reported by Emergencies Madrid.
According to the workers, in addition to the woman, named Laura and who was located in a bathroom on the first floor, where the offices were located, the other three missing people are men: Dambéle, Alfa and Jorge, aged between 30 and 50 years old and originally from Mali, Guinea and Ecuador. Apparently, two of them were in the basement bathroom and the third was on the highest floor of the building. They are all workers from the ANKA construction company and their colleagues claim that “they had a contract and a salary of about 1,100 euros per month.” The identity of the two bodies found is still unknown.
“We saw that the first floor was falling on us, I don’t know if they fell from higher up because we couldn’t see anything, it was all dust, you couldn’t even breathe,” explained the foreman of the building’s works shortly after the collapse occurred. The vice mayor, Inma Sanz, pointed out that efforts were concentrating on locating the missing and warned that the work of clearing debris to rescue them could last days, given the size of the disaster. The popular leader has avoided confirming the identity and role of the woman who could be among the people trapped under the rubble.
For her part, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has approached the area, cordoned off since the moment of the collapse, from the regional government headquarters in Puerta del Sol, but has not offered statements.
The workers who were working on the rehabilitation of the building have remained isolated by the Municipal Police until 6:00 p.m., waiting to find out the situation of their injured and missing colleagues. Subsequently, they left the area to leave their work material at a nearby construction site on Toledo Street. Representatives of the property of the damaged property also went to the scene of the disaster without wanting to make statements, as did some relatives of the victims with visible expressions of concern.
Work accident
The Government delegate, Francisco Martín, confirmed in statements to the media that it was a work accident, which is why the Municipal Judicial Police is taking charge of the investigation, while the National Police has withdrawn.
At the moment, the delegate added, “the possible impact on the adjacent buildings is being analyzed to take the appropriate measures.” The entire perimeter of the building has been evacuated. A security cordon has been installed to facilitate the movement of Emergency vehicles. Late in the afternoon they allowed the residents of the neighboring buildings and those in front of the collapsed building to enter and leave their homes – if they needed to -, always accompanied by Municipal Police officers.
The second vice president and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, has assured that the Labor Inspection is already acting due to the collapse of this building in Madrid. Díaz has expressed his “absolute solidarity with the families of the workers” of the building under construction.
The building was being rehabilitated to build a four-star hotel, and is owned by the Saudi RSR fund. The renovations were being carried out by the construction company Grupo Rehabilita since February of this year.
“A noise was heard in the slab and then we only saw a cloud of smoke,” said one of the workers, who did not want to give his name.
The manager of the well-known San Ginés chocolate shop, just on the next street, told this newspaper by phone that “the entire building fell down” and that they immediately banned the rest of the neighbors from entering.
“The building that fell had been abandoned for a long time and was under construction; they had installed a huge crane on the scaffolding. They had told me that they were going to build a hotel and that the work was going to take two years,” said a neighbor on the street who felt the roar of the fall. “Half an hour ago I noticed a terrible tremor in the street and a lot of dust rose in front of the building, a cloud that left people scared and confused,” he stated.
For his part, Miguel, who works at the El Cogollo restaurant, in the center of Madrid, says that, around 12:45, a cloud of dust invaded the premises and caused everyone present to be evacuated: “From the outside you can’t see anything, the façade is the same, everything was inside.” Miguel assures that they have felt the floor of their house shaking and they have looked out and have only seen a huge cloud of dust that has reached Ópera.
Milagros García Benito, the owner of a hair salon in front of the collapsed building, says that she was opening her business when the building collapsed. “It was a horrible, very loud noise. Everything was filled with white dust that looked like smoke, but it wasn’t.”
The Municipal Police have let in relatives of the bricklayers who were working on the construction site at the time of the building’s collapse. Two men who did not want to give their names entered Calle de las Hileras because, according to what they said, their brother was there. They have assured that they had been calling him all morning and he did not answer the phone, without offering any further information on the matter.
The collapsed building was built in 1965, according to Cadastre data, and has six floors and a parking lot in the basement. The plot where it is located has an area of 1,070 square meters and 6,745 useful buildings.
