At least 24 people were reported killed and 106 injured when the glass and concrete roof covering a huge, two-year-old Moscow water park gave way in what the mayor called the city’s biggest technical accident.
Initial reports said the roof at Transvaal Park had collapsed on Saturday night after an explosion, but officials including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov later said there was no evidence of a blast.
Investigators were considering numerous theories of what caused the collapse, including a heavy buildup of snow, the stark difference between the indoor and outdoor temperatures, and the seepage of condensate into the concrete supports.
By midmorning on Sunday, 23 bodies had been pulled from the rubble, and one victim died in a hospital, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to the Interfax news agency. Shoigu said there was still hope of finding people alive, and rescue efforts were slated to continue until evening, Echo of Moscow radio reported.
Andrei Seltsovsky of the Moscow city health department earlier said three of the dead were children and 19 other children had been hospitalised. A child’s birthday party was being held in the pool area when the roof collapsed, said Moscow police spokesperson Kirill Mazurin.
The collapse occurred at about 7.30pm local time as visitors basked in the balmy Transvaal Park in Moscow’s southwestern suburbs while temperatures outside hovered at about minus 15 degrees Celsius.
Altogether, there were about 800 people in the water park complex at the time of the collapse and 352 of them were in the pool area when the roof collapsed, Emergency Situations Ministry Viktor Beltsov said.
Roman Yazymin (29) was sun-tanning in a solarium on the upper floors of the complex when he heard a loud noise and the crash of shattering glass.
”It wasn’t an explosion, but the noise of metal collapsing,” he said and noted that, as he walked through the complex to retrieve his clothing, ”everything was in blood”.
Rescue workers rushed bloodied, moaning people clad in bikinis and swimming trunks on stretchers to waiting ambulances, while those who could clambered out barefoot into the snow. Close to 12 hours after the collapse, rescue workers were still digging through the debris trying to find casualties, and generators were used to pump heat into the area to increase the chances of survival.
Periodically, the rescuers would order a moment of silence to listen for sounds of life, and rescuers brought in sniffer dogs toward dawn, Ekho Moskvy radio reported.
The collapse left a gaping hole of 4 500 square metres, and torn insulation panels hung off the walls of the cavernous building. Workers used large cranes to lift heavy chunks of concrete and car-sized metal beams away from the pool area.
Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into negligence leading to deaths, said Moscow prosecutor Anatoly Zuyev, who blamed the collapse on faulty construction or maintenance. Ekho Moskvy said investigators had already started questioning workers who had been involved in the water park’s construction.
The complex, which opened in 2002, was designed by a Russian architectural firm and constructed by a Turkish firm, Kocak, Ekho Moskvy said. It is one of several flashy entertainment facilities that have opened over the past couple of years on the city’s outskirts. It includes a large pool, an artificial river and a lengthy water slide. — Sapa-AP