It was close to three in the morning this Wednesday when firefighters managed to rescue the last two lifeless bodies from the rubble of the building under construction that collapsed around 1:00 p.m. in the center of Madrid, at number 4 Calle de las Hileras, near the Ópera metro and the Teatro Real, Madrid Emergency sources confirmed. Hours earlier, the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez Almeida, had reported the discovery of the bodies of two of the four missing people. These are three men and a woman. The foreman of the work, a rehabilitation that had been underway for at least four months to build a four-star hotel, assured that at the time of the accident between 30 and 40 people could have been working at the site.
After saving the injured – two slightly injured and one with a fracture – and stabilizing the façade of the building, the Madrid firefighters began the search for the four missing people around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday with the trained dogs of the Municipal Police and those of the . In addition, the Air Support Unit of the Municipal Police flew over drones to collect images of the interior that would facilitate the rescue efforts. For hours, firefighters were also manually removing the nearly eight meters of debris that formed in order to reach the bodies, according to 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. At the time of the collapse, two of the deceased were on the ground floor, one on the first floor and another worker on the last floor, according to the workers’ versions. Psychologists from the emergency services attended to the relatives of the victims who came to the scene from the early hours of the afternoon.
The mayor, who arrived at the scene of the accident around 10:00 p.m. 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 that were evacuated for security reasons will be able to return to their homes throughout the night.
Initially, the workers indicated that the missing woman was “the architect”, but sources from the firefighters later assured that she was an administrator, named Laura and about 30 years old, who was in the offices located in the building at the time of the collapse. The mayor did not determine the woman’s position, but he did state that she had “responsibility in the work.”
18 fire crews from the Madrid City Council and a device from Samur with 13 units traveled to the site. One of the injured was taken to hospital with a broken leg and the other two only had minor injuries and were treated by psychologists after the incident. shockreported Emergencies Madrid.
According to the workers, in addition to the woman, named Laura and who was located in a bathroom on the first floor at the time of the collapse, the other three deceased are Dambéle, Alfa and Jorge, aged between 30 and 50 years old and originally from Mali, Guinea and Ecuador. According to his story, two of them were also 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.” At the moment, the full identity of the victims is 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, noted early in the afternoon that efforts were concentrating on locating the missing and warned that the work of clearing debris to rescue them could last days, given the dimension of the disaster. The popular leader also avoided confirming the identity and role of the deceased woman.
For her part, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, approached the area from the regional government headquarters in Puerta del Sol to the area, cordoned off since the moment of the collapse, but did not offer statements.
The workers who were working on the rehabilitation of the building remained isolated by the Municipal Police until 6:00 p.m., waiting to find out the situation of their injured and missing colleagues. Later, 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, so the Municipal Judicial Police is in charge of the investigation, while the National Police has withdrawn.
At the moment, the delegate added, “the possible impact on adjacent buildings is being analyzed to take appropriate measures.” The entire perimeter of the building remained evacuated. A security cordon was installed to facilitate the movement of Emergency vehicles. Late in the afternoon on Tuesday they allowed the residents of the surrounding 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, assured that the Labor Inspection is already acting due to the collapse of this building in Madrid. Díaz 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 Rehbilita 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, right 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,” commented 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 described.
For his part, Miguel, who works at the El Cogollo restaurant, in the center of Madrid, said that, around 12:45, a cloud of dust invaded the premises and caused everyone present to be evacuated: “From the outside you couldn’t see anything, the façade is the same, everything was inside.” Miguel claims that they felt the floor of their house tremble and they looked out and only saw a huge cloud of dust that reached Ópera.
Milagros García Benito, the owner of a hair salon in front of the collapsed building, said 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 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 Las Hileras Street because, according to what they said, their brother was there. They stated 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.
