Four killed as building collapses

A 12-storey building collapsed in a Cairo suburb on Monday night after a fire broke out on a ground floor store, killing at least four people, including three firefighters. Eleven people remained trapped in the rubble.

Rescue crews worked into Tuesday trying to free those trapped in the building, police said. Most were police officers and firefighters who had been dispatched to put out the blaze or evacuate the area Monday night, police said.

The bodies of three firefighters and a private citizen were removed from the rubble, according to Egypt’s semi-official Middle East News Agency. Eleven people remained trapped, it reported on Tuesday morning. Officials on the scene would not comment on the numbers.

Thirty-three people were hospitalised with injuries, Health Minister Mohammed Awad Tag Eddin said.

The fire broke out on the ground floor of the building in the suburb of Nasr City on Monday, police said.

The 12-storey building collapsed accordion-style, with the top floor smashing down until it was level with the second and third floors of neighbouring buildings. Several satellite dishes rested intact on the roof. A panda toy, slippers, bags and a brass pot were scattered in the debris.

Most of the residents had been evacuated by the time of the collapse, authorities said.

Police sealed off the area to keep residents away and to prevent any disruption of the rescue effort.

Rescue officials evacuated two adjacent buildings that were damaged by the collapse as firemen and policemen worked under floodlights looking for survivors or bodies.

A police officer who briefed reporters at the scene about three hours after the collapse said 16 people were trapped – 14 police officers and two workers at the store where the fire began.

Later, a fire brigade officer was pulled alive from the rubble, his face covered with dust. He was rushed to an ambulance amid cries of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” from neighbourhood residents.

Other officials put the number of trapped at between eight and 18. It was not clear whether the discrepancy in figures resulted from survivors being rescued.

Mahmoud el-Sayyed, a 21-year-old waiter in a nearby restaurant, said he helped rescue two firefighters as smoke engulfed the neighbourhood.

“Their lower parts were trapped. I held the head of one of them” as rescuers removed concrete slabs by hand. ”After about two hours, we managed to pull the man out,” he told The Associated Press.

After several hours of the delicate clearing of rubble by hand in search of survivors, bulldozers were brought in early Tuesday to help the rescuers.

The building is located on the main commercial Abbas Al-Aqqad Street in Nasr City, an eastern suburb of the Egyptian capital near the airport. The area is home to many high-rise residential buildings and shopping centres.

Building collapses are common in Egypt and are often caused by shoddy construction or the unauthorised building of extra stories.

The building which collapsed on Monday was built in 1981. The owner illegally added four more floors 12 years ago, police said. An order from the city to tear down the extra floors two years ago was never executed.

Six days ago, tenants complained to police, saying renovation in the ground-floor appliance store could damage the building’s foundations.

The last such incident was May 4, when a seven-story apartment block in Cairo collapsed, killing at least seven people.