Six dead and 48 missing in devastating George building collapse

As rescue efforts at the collapsed construction site enter their second day, 48 people remain trapped under the rubble. Authorities have yet to identify the developers responsible for the site.

Rescue teams are in a race against time to retrieve as many trapped workers as possible from beneath the rubble. 

As of 12pm on Tuesday, six of the 27 patients removed from the collapsed building had been declared deceased, while another 48 people who were present at the time of the collapse remained unaccounted for. 

Relatives and loved ones of the trapped workers were escorted to a waiting room at the civic centre, where they received psychosocial support services. As the rescue drags on, fear and uncertainty fill their every moment. 

George mayor Leon van Wyk said he did not know the developers, engineers and contractors responsible for the site, despite his office being across the road from where the tragic incident happened. “Unfortunately, I don’t know those names at this stage,” he told a Daily Maverick reporter. 

“I think we need to establish [the names] from the Department of Labour. I personally do not know.” 

Municipal manager Dr Michele Gratz agreed with the mayor, adding the current focus of the authorities was on rescuing the trapped workers. 

Van Wyk and Gratz were addressing a press briefing on Tuesday alongside Western Cape Premier Alan Winde; Anton Bredell, Western Cape MEC of Local Government and Environmental Affairs; Colin Deiner, chief director of the provincial Disaster Management Services; and Memory Booysen, executive mayor of Garden Route District Municipality.

“What I also have put in place through the director general… [is] already getting an investigation going. We have to make sure that while [the rescue] is happening we have got specialist engineers on site because we have to find out why this happened and how it happened. Of course, obviously the building goes through planning processes at the municipality level, and all those processes obviously were being followed, but… we have to find out exactly why a building like this collapses,” said Winde.

“We have to make sure that no stone will be left unturned.”

Rescue effort

Various rescue teams are involved in the operation in George, including teams from the City of Cape Town, Breedevallei tech rescue, Search and Rescue South Africa (Sarza), the South African Police Service and nonprofit Gift of the Givers. There are currently about 111 professionals on site, according to Winde.

Speaking on yesterday’s rescue efforts, Deiner said, “We were actually hearing people shouting through the rubble, so that was the first point. And then the dogs come in and the dogs do a verification. Once the dogs have verified that there’s somebody, we have high-tech equipment that we can actually start triangulating and pinpointing where someone is trapped.”

Deiner explained that the international standard for the length of this type of rescue effort is three days. “In other words, we treat everybody as still alive and we try and rescue everybody, so that’s what we’ve been doing. 

“We’ll make a call after three days [of] where we stand… We’re going to give the absolute maximum time to see how many people we can rescue.”

The rescuers are currently in contact with 11 people beneath the rubble, including four who are trapped in a basement area. Deiner estimated that it would take most of the day to rescue the people trapped in the basement.

Later in the day, the rescue teams will start a process of “delayering”, he continued. “That would mean that we would then start lifting the different floors off each other, and the reason we do that is that there’s a possibility that people could still be alive…”

Community support

As the rescue teams diligently worked through the rubble, community members continued to show their support by bringing an abundance of snacks and refreshments, generously sharing words of encouragement and offering heartfelt prayers for the safety and well-being of those involved in the rescue operation.

Update from Monday

Workers are being freed from a collapsed building in George with help from emergency services from as far as Worcester and the Gift of the Givers. 

Emergency services and police at the site, trying to free trapped workers. (Photo: Supplied)

This building under construction collapsed in George, Western Cape, trapping workers. (Photo: Supplied)

This is the building that collapsed in George, Western Cape. (Photo: Supplied)

Dust billows after the building collapsed. (Photo: Stamhoof Brendon Torob Adams / Facebook)

The scene after this building under construction collapsed in George, Western Cape. (Photo: Supplied)

The debris after a building under construction collapsed in George, Western Cape. Emergency services are at the site, trying to free trapped workers. (Photo: Stamhoof Brendon Torob Adams / Facebook)

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