Four killed in Rio de Janeiro buildings collapse

Jan 26, 2012, 21:42 GMT

Rio de Janeiro - Rescue workers in Rio de Janeiro continued to search for survivors Thursday in the rubble of three collapsed buildings in the bustling city's centre that killed at least four people.

Coronel Sergio Simoes, head of Rio de Janeiro's Civil Defence, said rescue teams hoped to find alive at least some of the 18 people who remain missing in the wake of late Wednesday's collapse.

'It's a race against time. Our priority is the possibility that there may be survivors, but that possibility is getting ever smaller,' Simoes admitted.

The collapse affected three adjacent office buildings, one of them 20 storeys high, in the heart of the city near Cinelandia Square, one of Rio's main sites with monuments like the Municipal Theatre and the National Museum of Fine Arts.

It happened around 8:30 pm (2230 GMT) Wednesday, when most of the usual occupants had already left work. The other buildings had 10 and four storeys.

'At least this tragedy did not happen at the busiest time in this area,' Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral said.

The fourth body was retrieved from the rubble Thursday afternoon.

Many hours later, the area continued to be covered in a dense cloud of dust, and access was restricted. Streets were covered in debris, cars were buried under rubble and several nearby buildings were damaged in the incident.

The collapse renewed concerns about safety in Rio de Janeiro, which is to host the Football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016.

'The work is going slowly. We have experts from the Fire Department rescue group who were even active looking for victims of the quake in Haiti,' Carlos Roberto Osorio, a top city official in Rio de Janeiro, told Brazilian television channel GloboNews.

The search is expected to go on for at least 24 more hours, he said.

'Only once we locate all the victims will we start investigating the cause of the collapses,' Osorio stressed.

The cause of the collapse was not immediately known, but Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes noted that the authorities have virtually ruled out a gas leak. Some eyewitnesses reported that an explosion had brought down the buildings.

Investigators were mainly focusing on possible structural defect in the buildings.

Expert Moacir Duarte also mentioned as a potential cause water infiltration in the ground where the buildings stood. If this was the case, he warned, 'it means that other nearby buildings are still at risk.'

The collapse gave those inside the buildings little warning, said a man whose wife worked in one of the affected structures and remains missing.

'She and I were chatting on MSN and suddenly the connection got cut off. I called her over the phone, but there was no answer. She had not left the office, she did not say bye, she did not say anything. I'm desperate,' he told Brazilian media.

A building explosion in October killed three people and wounded 13 others in a restaurant.