Multiple parties could be held liable once investigation is done
At 6am on Thursday, 9 May, the Garden Route District Joint Operational Centre in George announced that more people were trapped in the rubble of the collapsed five-storey building than initially estimated.
“The contractor has now confirmed that the number of workers on site at the time of the collapse was 81,” it said.
As at 1pm on 10 May, 41 people were unaccounted for, 40 had been rescued and 12 were deceased (according to News24). Forty-four victims remained unaccounted for.
Authorities report that, of the patients rescued from the site, 16 are in critical condition, six have life-threatening injuries and seven have minor injuries.
“This building has provided us with a whole range of challenges from a rescue perspective,” said Colin Deiner, the chief director of Western Cape disaster management services.
“Although we went [in] at high risk to save lives … what is also important is our own
people’s safety. The stage we are in now is a long and difficult one because we have to look for … bodies in a structure of five storeys that [has] collapsed.”
Western Cape MEC for Local Government and Environmental Affairs Anton Bredell
said it was too early to give any updates about the investigation into the cause of the building collapse.
“We must give the engineers the space to determine the facts. We do have engineers on the site. We want an independent investigation and then the consequences will follow after that,” he said.
Daily Maverick spoke to Chris Roos, a George advocate specialising in engineering and construction law, about what this type of investigation would entail. Although his firm is not involved in investigating the Victoria Street building collapse, it has investigated other construction incidents.
When conducting this type of investigation, Roos said they usually started with the architectural design, before moving on to the structural design and the functions of the structural engineer.
“From that point, we will then move over into the fabrication and manufacturing space to see what processes were followed… And then, ultimately, we will move into the construction site itself and there, typically, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered,” Roos said.
Samples of the structure, such as the concrete used in construction, would usually be sent to laboratories for analysis.
He said it was possible that multiple parties involved in the project could be held accountable.