South Africa: A media statement has been released updating about the George Building Collapse incident in Victoria Street, George. Following the update received at 6:00 a.m. GRDM Joc (Garden Route District Municipality – Joint Operations Centre) confirms that a hospitalised red patient has been declared deceased as of May 09, 2024.
Reportedly, the note shared by Premier of Western Cape – Alan Winde confirms that the total estimated number of incidents occurred on-site at that time of building collapse as eighty-one (81).
The total retrieved patients are counted as 37 and blue patients are 9 who are deceased. Red status patients from the site on recovery and in critical condition are total fifteen (15).
The yellow status patients on recovery from the site, who have received life-threatening injuries are six (6). Green status patients recovering from minor injuries they received on-site are seven (7) and the unaccounted patients are estimated as forty-four (44).
As per the sources, the rescue operation has completed 88 hours till 6:25 on May 09, 2024. Big earth-moving machinery was called last night, on May 09, 2024. The machineries included two 5-ton excavators, three 20-ton excavators with hammers and buckets.
Three cube front-end loaders and trucks for extraction and clearing the place were also brought. The rescue operation continued to have a multi-agency approach that will involve local excavation contractors and the District Roads Engineer.
Furthermore, despite of the introduction of large machinery, rescue techniques will still be applied meticulously and sensitively by the highly skilled and experienced team of disaster management of the city.
Another update related to the incident will be released soon, on-site triage description, blue deceased, red critical, yellow life-threatening injuries and green minor injuries.
Notably, the medical status of the patients is not disclosed yet, and the status provided is at recovery from the incident site.
The update followed the rescue operation by the SAPS search and rescue team with the sniffer dogs, to retrieve 53 trapped construction workers.
The workers were trapped in a collapse of a multi-storey building which was under construction in Victoria Street, on May 06, 2024 and also included multiple Disaster Service personnel.
According to the first emergency call that was received around 2:14 p.m., the building collapsed at 2:09 p.m. in the afternoon.
