Rescuers have pulled five bodies from the rubble of a construction accident in Uganda and were scrambling on Thursday to save more still trapped alive a day after a three-storey building collapsed on them, a Ugandan official said.
Fire and rescue chief Joseph Mugisha said 20 construction workers have been hospitalised so far. More bodies are believed to be buried.
”We are continuing with the rescue and the recovery of the bodies,” Mugisha said. ”Some people below these walls are dead — obviously dead — but some others are still alive. At this time, we are making an effort to get out one man calling himself Alex who is talking from below.”
The building — being built as a hotel in a larger complex in Bwebajja — was situated on a slope overlooking the main highway from the capital, Kampala, to Entebbe International airport. Bwebajja is 18km south-east of Kampala.
Workers had been on every floor when the building collapsed on Wednesday morning after workers removed support poles on the first floor, witnesses said.
One side of the building buckled first and then all three floors dropped on to each other, they said.
From the wreckage, steel columns jutted out from the fallen walls, while one wing still stood intact.
Police and private rescue teams have been working non-stop since Wednesday morning, drilling through the collapsed floors to reach workers believed to be alive. One worker at an adjacent site said as many as 80 people were in the hotel when it collapsed.
”We are trying to enter by drilling, lifting the heavy masonry and removing the steel works. We cannot tell the exact figure of people still below the structure,” Mugisha said.
The hotel collapse was caused by poor workmanship and construction failure, he said on Wednesday.
”The cement that was used for mixing the concrete was not enough.”
There has been a rash of construction accidents in Uganda in recent years. Last week, a new classroom at a primary school near Kampala crumbled, leaving two people dead and five others injured. — Sapa-AP