An apartment building condemned for more than a decade, but which was used by homeless people, collapsed in the state of Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil, killing 14 people, including six children, firefighters reported on Saturday.
The building in the Paulista suburb of Recife collapsed in the early hours of Friday, prompting an intensive search for victims.
Searchers searched the rubble with the help of sniffer dogs and rescued two 15-year-old girls and a 65-year-old woman, firefighters said. An 18-year-old man was also rescued alive, but later died from his injuries.
“Search operations are now focused on animal recovery,” the fire department said Saturday.
The building was occupied by people experiencing homelessness while living there had been prohibited since 2010, the City of Paulista said in a statement.
City officials referred to the structure as a “coffin block,” a name given to large-scale buildings constructed in the 1970s in the Recife metropolitan area, Folha de São Paulo newspaper reported.
The town hall statement said the problem of people using officially closed buildings in Paulista is “chronic”. Officials had raised the issue during a recent visit by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is from the northeastern state.
The collapse in Paulista is the second such tragedy in less than three months in the state of Pernambuco. A building disintegrated in April in the nearby town of Olinda, killing at least five people.
Heavy rains had flooded the Recife area before the building collapsed in Paulista, prompting Pernambuco’s water and climate agency to issue an alert for the metropolitan area.
A Presbyterian church near the site of the fallen building offered housing assistance to families living there, city officials said. The church also collected donations of food, clothing, mattresses, water and hygiene products.