1 dead, 9 missing in Tenerife apartment block collapse

One woman has died and nine are feared missing following the collapse of an apartment block in a Tenerife resort.

Emergency services continue to scour the rubble for survivors after the four-storey building partially collapsed in Los Cristianos, near Playa de las Americas in the south of the Canary Island.

Arona city council confirmed a woman had been found dead, while searches were continuing for nine of the 28 people who lived in the building.

Local media reported the body of the woman, aged around 70, had been pulled from the rubble by emergency services.

Authorities said three people were injured — a 57-year-old woman who suffered serious trauma to her upper body, a 28-year-old Italian man who had a shoulder injury, and a 55-year-old woman who suffered an anxiety attack and was treated at the scene.

Some 15 people were said to be in the residential building at the time of the collapse, at around 9.30am local time yesterday.

Nearby buildings were evacuated as a precaution and 50 troops from the island’s Military Emergency Unit were deployed along with search dogs.

Images on social media showed crowds gathering as firefighters stood among the debris. In one video bystanders can be seen rushing towards the scene amid plumes of dust.

A spokesman for the Spanish Red Cross said it had sent volunteers to help the emergency services with the search.

Newcastle United footballer Ayoze Perez, who was born in Tenerife, tweeted his “support” for those affected by the collapse of the apartment block.

The owner of the Hide Away Pub, Javier Velazquez, aged 58, lives in the flat above the bar next to the affected building and said his terrace had been “obliterated”.

He told The Sun: “No one was on the terrace because I don’t open till 5pm but if this had happened in the evening, it would have been far worse.

“The noise when the building collapsed was tremendous. There was work going on in an old commercial premises on the first floor and I fear what’s happened could be something to do with that.”

He added that there were three separate collapses and he believed that a Spanish woman had died.

Tenerife, and the south in particular, is popular with British holidaymakers, with nearly 1.7m Britons visiting the island in 2014, according to official tourism figures.