The emergency services of Madrid, read Firefighters, Municipal Police and Samur emergency services, experienced yesterday one of the most intense days in recent years. It was eight intense hours of work. The floor of a building being rehabilitated had collapsed and there were two workers under the rubble.
It was a “dimensioned” job because from the first moment it was known where the workers were. And, practically, from the beginning it was assumed that they were dead, as an eight-ton beam had fallen in the area where they were working.
At 11:15 a.m. yesterday, Tuesday, the notice came out that the floor of a building under construction in the Madrid district of Fuencarral-El Pardo had collapsed. Initially, more than 40 firefighters and various ambulances arrive until they see the magnitude of the work accident. Upon arriving at the scene, the construction manager of the company Demoliciones Madrid makes it clear that where the collapse occurred there were three workers working, but one left, Hassan. He was immediately transferred to the La Paz Hospital, with a broken leg and multiple bruises, but there is no fear for his life.
Samur’s spokesperson, Gema Martín, explains to La Vanguardia that in her opinion “the two drones provided by the Municipal Police played a fundamental role.” It was a complicated rescue due to the “unstable” situation in which the property had been left after the accident and the risk that one of the maneuvers would lead to the collapse of another part of it. “The drones gave the fire team, which was directing the operation, a dimension of what the building was like from above and to know if there were more beams that could collapse,” she says.
The Madrid City Council Firefighter’s duty supervisor, José Luis Lejido, indicated last night that the floors of the sixth and fifth floors of the building had collapsed and fell to the fourth, where the workers were located and whose structure was also damaged.
The weak situation in which the structure of the property was left made rescue efforts difficult. In addition to the machinery that had been operating from the beginning, a large tonnage crane from the Grúas Aguado company was used.
With this, the concrete slab was raised centimeter by centimeter, thus preventing the movements from causing the collapse of other parts of the building. “It took us a lot to get it up. We have prioritized the safety of those involved and that is why it took so long, knowing that unfortunately we were dealing with deceased people,” the Firefighter supervisor stressed. Thus, finally, they managed to extract the two lifeless bodies of the workers, who were in “very radical situations,” he added. It was around 7:15 p.m. Eight hours of intense, but prudent work.
There were two people left under the rubble. The first is Álvaro, a 35-year-old Colombian national, and the second, is Congolese, Ngolo, 51 years old. They had been working on the work for about half a year.
According to data managed by the Habitat Federation, the branch to which the Construction sector in CCOO belongs, 150,652 people work in construction in Madrid, of which 60,536 are foreigners.
The accident occurred in a property located at the confluence of Lezama and Llodio streets that was being rehabilitated to house 140 homes and that previously had a tertiary use.
In this rescue, the bodies of the workers were very located and they only had to be able to be removed without endangering the life of a firefighter. While, for example, when an entire building collapsed on 46 Lagasca Street in Madrid in 2016, the number of victims inside and their location was unknown. Finally, on that occasion a 46-year-old worker died and the rest of the workers were unharmed, but “their search was more complicated,” remembers Gema García.
From that moment on, the bodies were at the disposal of the Judicial Police and the judge on duty, who proceeded to remove them to be transferred by the funeral services to the Forensic Anatomical Institute.
A tragic end but one that fell within the scenarios foreseen by the emergency services and political leaders. Mayor José Luis Mrtínez Almeida, the vice mayor, Inmaculada Sanz, and the district councilor, José Antonio Martínez Páramo, went to the scene.
Shortly after the event, Samur-Civil Protection psychologists attended to the colleagues of the deceased and contacted the victims’ relatives to inform them of the outcome.
Once the rescue work is completed, the agents of the Workplace Accident Groups of the Judicial Coordination Station of the Madrid Municipal Police continue to investigate the causes of the collapse.
In parallel, the Madrid City Council will review whether the licenses and administrative procedure for the execution of the work are in order.
