(Johannesburg) Nineteen people died in the collapse on May 6 of a building under construction in George, on the South African coast, and 33 are still missing, according to a new report from the municipality released on Sunday.
A total of 29 people were pulled out alive from the rubble, including a man found and rescued on Saturday after spending 116 hours under the rubble of the construction site. “It’s the miracle we all hoped for,” provincial government leader Alan Winde commented on X on Saturday.
Since the tragedy, the circumstances of which are still unexplained, the rescue teams have been working tirelessly.
“People have the feeling that we have to go very slowly, especially with what happened yesterday,” Police Minister Bheki Cele told public television channel SABC during a visit to the site.
Family members staying at a nearby town hall told the police minister of their frustration at the slow pace of the identification process, carried out through fingerprinting, DNA testing and photographs.
The authorities have previously refused to confirm that a majority of the workforce on this site could have been foreigners.
The government, however, indicated that it was in contact with the diplomatic missions of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi and launched a call for “psychosocial support practitioners fluent in the Chewa, Portuguese and Shona languages to assist survivors and their families”.