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Date Published: 07/05/2024

Two killed in Madrid building collapse

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A third victim has been hospitalised but is not in a serious condition

All the men were construction workers in the process of refurbishing the building

Part of a building that was being refurbished in Madrid collapsed this Tuesday morning, May 7, killing two workers and injuring another.

Firefighters and rescue workers slaved away for hours to try to save the men who became buried under a concrete slab in the building, which is located on Calle Lezama and Calle Llodio streets in the Spanish capital.

Initial indications suggest that the fifth and sixth floors of the building came loose and plummeted down into the fourth floor, where the construction workers were located.

Even before the bodies of the deceased were found, the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, who was at the scene, had already said that “everything pointed to the fact that they had died”. The flimsy state of the building’s structure made the rescue operation, which lasted for nearly 8 hours, much more difficult.

The large concrete slab that fell over had to be lifted inch by inch with the help of a crane, very slowly to prevent other parts of the building caving in as well.

.@BomberosMad están situados muy cerca de los dos trabajadores atrapados y a la espera de una grúa de mayor tonelaje. Los trabajos pueden durar horas. pic.twitter.com/3n0TYJXgOJ
— Emergencias Madrid (@EmergenciasMad) May 7, 2024

“We had a hard time getting it up. We have prioritised the safety of those involved and that is why it has taken us so long, knowing that unfortunately we were dealing with dead people,” said the Madrid City Fire Department’s supervisor, José Luis Lejido.

According to one of the colleagues of the deceased, with whom he had been working on the site for six months, the victims were Ngolo, a Nigerian man aged about 50, and Ángel, a Colombian man in his 30s. A third victim, Hassan, was injured and was taken to Madrid’s Hospital de La Paz with a broken leg and multiple contusions, but his life is reportedly not in danger.

The collapse occurred while workers were shoring up the building, which was being refurbished to build student housing.

The circumstances of the incident are now being investigated by officers from the Occupational Accident Group of the Judicial Coordination Police Station of the Madrid Municipal Police.

In January 2021, four people died in Madrid when a gas explosion caused a building to collapse on Calle Toledo, and in 2018 the collapse of an apartment block being refurbished on Calle Martínez Campos left two dead.

Image: Emergencias Madrid

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