Rescuers in Moscow dug through wreckage on Thursday night in a desperate search for survivors after the domed roof of a market collapsed, killing at least 56 people.
The glass and steel structure covering Baumansky market in the east of the city caved in at about 5am, apparently under the weight of a heavy snowfall. As darkness fell and temperatures dipped below freezing, an army of rescue workers used metal cutters, shovels and cranes to clear the ruins, stopping for moments of silence to listen for the cries of survivors.
”We’ve got the heat cannons pumping warm air into the buried galleries,” Sergei Shoigu, the minister for emergency situations, told the NTV channel. ”It’s a complicated layered structure. But people are knocking and calling out; we can hear them under the ruins. And we’re digging our way through. It takes time.”
Some of those trapped called relatives with details of their location as fears grew that water levels were rising beneath the ruins. At least two were pulled out alive and rescuers could be seen fixing a man trapped under a concrete slab with an intravenous drip.
A fire flared briefly at the scene in the afternoon but was quickly extinguished without casualties.
Witnesses said the entire roof of the market had collapsed on a mezzanine and stalls below selling produce, meat and clothes. Up to 200 stallholders, drivers and loaders were thought to have been in the building as it geared up to open at 7am.
Thirty-one people were injured, and officials estimated that up to 40 more people could still be under the wreckage.
The accident came two years after the glass roof of the Transvaal water park in Moscow collapsed, killing 28 people. Prosecutors were on Thursday questioning the architect, Nodar Kancheli, who designed both buildings.
At police cordons around the market friends and relatives waited anxiously for news of victims. Sarhan Parnakho (65) a cleaner at the market, had been staying in the guesthouse that overlooks it. ”I was sleeping when I heard this terrible noise and the earth shook,” he said, tears streaming down his face. ”I rushed outside. There was dust everywhere. It was awful. The market had just disappeared. We dragged people out with with their heads crushed.”
Many of the victims were thought to be traders from the Caucasus or Central Asian states. Zili, an Azeri, was trying to call a friend who sold greens at the market. ”There’s just no answer,” he said, the phone clamped to his ear. ”He’s gone. Who could survive under all that?”
Nearby a woman had to be held up by friends as she collapsed, wailing with grief. One old man who mumbled he was a retired engineer who constructed similar buildings was set upon by a distraught trader, crying: ”It’s thanks to idiots like you that this has happened!”
Oksana, who worked on an underwear stall, said: ”I’ve lost so many friends.”
Meeting the Orthodox patriarch Alexei II, President Vladimir Putin said a thorough investigation was necessary. ”The work is going on intensively, and rescuers are doing all they can to help the survivors,” he said.
The city’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, who visited the scene twice to oversee rescue efforts, confirmed the tragedy was probably the result of snow collecting on the roof.
”Chances are more than 90% that a terrorist act can be ruled out,” he said. ”It was a technical accident.”
At the site powerful lamps were trained on a morass of concrete, twisted metal girders and smashed glass panels as rescuers prepared to search through the night. Workers removed tramlines on surrounding streets to allow cranes easier access.
The tragedy will provide tough questions for Moscow officials who approved the Baumansky dome in checks of the architect’s buildings carried out after the Transvaal collapse. Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation on charges of negligence leading to the deaths of two or more people.
Roof collapses
Russia: The collapse of a swimming pool’s roof in February 2004 kills 28 people and injures 200 at the Transvaal Park complex in Moscow.
France: Four people die in May 2004 when part of the domed roof of terminal 2E comes crashing down at Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris.
Germany: Fifteen people are killed and 36 injured when the roof of an ice rink collapses in the Bavarian town of Bad Reichenhall on January 2. Most of the victims are children. The roof, built in the early 1970s, was thought to have been laden with about 180 tonnes of snow.
Poland: Sixty-five people die and more than 140 are injured when the snow-covered roof of a hall in the southern city of Katowice collapses on January 28. About 700 people had been attending a racing pigeon exhibition there at the time. Warsaw later declares a three-day period of national mourning.
Austria: One hundred children are evacuated from a school in Kopfing after its roof partially collapses on February 8 under the weight of about a metre of snow. In a separate incident on the same day, a factory roof in Salzburg collapses. There are no injuries in either case. – Guardian Unlimited Â