One found alive under collapsed Istanbul building

An apartment building collapsed in Istanbul today, and rescue teams reached one person trapped alive under the debris, firefighter chief said.

It was not clear whether there were any other people trapped.

"We just reached one person under the debris and his health is good," Orhan Akyildiz, chief of the firefighters said.

Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said residents had been evacuated from the building, which he said was eight-floors high, before it collapsed, suggesting that only a few people might have been trapped. There were no immediate casualty figures.

"Cracking was heard about half an hour before it collapsed and it was evacuated to a large extent," Guler said.

"One or two people reportedly returned to pick up their belongings." Kadir Topbas, mayor of Istanbul, said the building collapsed when workers were trying to demolish an adjacent building.

"This is the result of serious negligence," said Topbas, blaming a contractor for damaging the foundations of the building while trying to demolish another building next door.

Rescue workers were seen crouching in front of gaps in the rubble in search of survivors. Television footage showed people being evacuated from neighbouring buildings, some carrying babies. One elderly woman could be seen crying as she tried to lift debris with her bare hands.

Women wailed as they walked past the rubble and a large crowd gathered around the site. Rescuers appealed for quiet so they could hear whether people were trapped in the rubble.

Building collapses are not uncommon in Turkey, where shoddy construction was blamed for the deaths of thousands of people during two massive earthquakes in 1999.

Several contractors who were charged with negligence for ignoring building codes escaped punishment in February when statute-of-limitations expired in all ongoing cases that were filed in 1999.

In February, a five-floor apartment building collapsed in Istanbul, killing two people and injuring 26 others.

Turkish rescue services have expertise in dealing with building collapses, a result of Turkey's long history of devastating earthquakes.

Turkish rescuers often carry out earthquake drills in this sprawling city of more than 12 million, which experts believe could be hit by a huge quake sometime in the next 30 years.

Geologists have urged the Turkish government since 1999 - when two earthquakes west of Istanbul killed more than 18,000 people - to tear down some 50,000 buildings that would probably collapse if a big quake hit Istanbul.

They say hundreds of thousands of other buildings that rise in an unstable mass of brick, mortar and stone need to be reinforced.