SOUTH AFRICA: SIX KILLED IN BUILDING COLLAPSE

GEORGE, SOUTH AFRICA: Rescuers said on Tuesday they had made contact with 11 people as they raced to save dozens still unaccounted for nearly 24 hours after the deadly collapse of a building in the South African city of George.

Twenty-seven people have been pulled out of the debris of the five-storey building, which collapsed on Monday while under construction, municipal authorities said.

Six of those have died, they said in George, which lies 400 kilometres east of the city of Cape Town.

Contact has been made with 11 people who are under rubble among 48 still unaccounted for, they said. “We are in contact with 11 people” trapped under rubble, Colin Deiner, head of rescue operations, told a news conference in Cape Town.

The main focus is to get everyone out, he said.

“Once we have got all the people that we know about out, we are going to start a process called delayering,” Deiner said.

“We would then start lifting the different floors off each other,” he said, adding it would be “tricky” to remove the concrete trapping the workers.

Provincial premier Alan Winde told the same news conference that the death toll had risen from five to six.

A construction crew of 75 people was at the site at the time of the collapse at around 2 pm (local time) on Monday, authorities said. “Three teams of rescue personnel are currently working on three different areas within the site of the collapsed building,” they said.

The reasons for the collapse of the building, which included an underground parking garage, are still unknown.

Construction companies and city authorities have been working to draw up a list of those still unaccounted for, according to the city.

President Cyril Ramaphosa offered his “deep condolences to the relatives and friends” of the victims and said his thoughts were with the families of the dead and missing.