A 10-storey hotel collapsed in Argentina, leaving one person dead and seven still trapped in the debris.
Firefighters searching for survivors rescued a woman from the rubble of the Dubrovnik Hotel in Villa Gesell, a coastal city 350km south of the capital Buenos Aires. The building collapsed in the early hours of Tuesday, local officials said.
Among those suspected to be trapped are workers from a construction site allegedly operating without municipal permits at the Dubrovnik hotel, according to reports. Firefighters managed to rescue an elderly woman alive, while an 80-year-old man has been killed, local officials said.
More than 300 firefighters, police and other rescue officials were at the scene, in a rescue operation already ongoing for more than eight hours. Local officials alleged they had detected and halted unauthorized construction work being carried out inside the building without proper clearance back in August.
A prosecutor has opened an investigation to determine the cause of the collapse, but Villa Gesell’s municipality said the hotel was undergoing a renovation without the proper permits. The courts have ordered the arrest of four people in connection with the hotel’s collapse.
Local security minister Javier Alonso was quoted as saying that there were no guests in the hotel, but there were workers staying in another part of the building, which was built in 1986. The adjacent building is also at risk of collapse, according to the city’s mayor Gustavo Barrera.
