On Rivadavia and Belén avenues, the hours pass but the anguish and feeling of abandonment described by the residents affected by the collapse of the building located in Floresta, does not.
What's more,
now he feels much stronger.
The surviving families and relatives who come to support them are scattered all over the path that surrounds the place of the tragedy.
There are children, many of them asleep in the arms of their mothers, and many others covered by blankets that the residents of the Floresta area have been donating.
Some groups of families, friends or neighbors cry, hug, comfort each other with words in their ears or caresses on the back.
And, also, they prepare for the night:
it will be long, cold, and full of uncertainty
.
At the moment, the City Firefighters are in the place and also officials of Buenos Aires Presente (BAP), the assistance center for people in vulnerable situations in the City of Buenos Aires.
Operation in front of the Rivadavia and Belén building where the fatal collapse occurred.
Photo Martin Bonetto
All the people who resided in that building
are "wearing it"
, with the few things they could get out of their homes before the collapse.
Some still hope that they will be allowed in to recover at least what could have been miraculously saved.
But so far,
no one is allowed in the building
.
Marta is one of those who hopes to be able to recover something of what she lost.
She, with her husband and her daughter, Sofía, had lived in one of the apartments on the ground floor for quite some time.
And it was in that place where she heard the
strange noises
that warned her of what would come in a matter of seconds.
On Tuesday afternoon, rescuers managed to find some pets among the rubble.
Photo Martin Bonetto
"I heard everything, I was with a neighbor when I heard noises and I got out quickly. I took what I could, my daughter, my rabbit and my dog and I got out before the roof fell on us," explains Marta, who laments because
she was unable to get her two other pets out, her cats
.
"Some neighbors went to the hostels in the City, but we didn't.
We stayed here and spent the night here
. And today we are going to spend it here too, in the street," says the woman.
Marta clarifies that the City Government gave them food, clothing, but so far there is no resolution on where these families will spend the nights.
Many families prefer not to go to shelters and wait on the street for a solution to their housing problem.
Photo Martin Bonetto
"In addition, for every day they will not give me a place to sleep. And
renting is very expensive
, there is no money.
We lost everything
, we lost the refrigerator, everything we had. They don't let us go in to get anything because another piece could fall ceiling", remarks Marta.
Now they tell her that of the two cats that were trapped under the rubble, they managed to save one, the smallest: Milo.
Firefighters managed to rescue cats from the rubble.
Photo Martin Bonetto
The mystery of Felicitas, the woman who disappeared after the collapse
"Felicitas is still trapped in the rubble, she is an old lady, and she sold stockings and paid her rent," Marta comments on the case of the woman over 70 who, the neighbors presume, is still trapped in the rubble, since that she was not found in any of the hospitals where the wounded were taken.
"I am too anguished. Not having a home, not having a place to warm up and sleep well. It is ugly to live on the street, without help. I hope someone can give us a hand. We only have one relative who lives in the provinces and we don't want to bother him", concludes Marta, who now sits down to put three-year-old Sofía to sleep.
Her husband Cristopher, next to her, is in charge of feeding Milo.
The whole family, wait.
After the collapse, the street
Sonia waits with her three children on the sidewalk and assures that they will stay like this all night, waiting for an answer.
She says that at the time the event occurred, she was not in the place because she had gone out to work like her husband: "There were only my two girls, Marcelo and Elías. The older one was the one who heard a noise in the background and He went to the door to see, but the dust covered all his sight. They yelled at him to come out, they told him:
'I came out, the whole house fell down'
".
"The first thing he did
was go back for his little brother and save him, and when they were outside they couldn't go back in
. Nobody gives us a solution so we all thought we'd stay here to spend the night."
Anguish and uncertainty of the inhabitants of the building that collapsed in Floresta.
Photo Martin Bonetto
"When I returned I saw the youngest in a panic, he was very scared. We lived here for fifteen years in this same place, our children grew up here. And now we have lost everything. My children cannot go to school because we could not get anything, nor backpacks, or notebooks, nothing. My son Elías went to school with the twelve-year-old girl who died," emphasizes Sonia.
It is already night in the Floresta neighborhood, and the residents, led by Fidel and "Persy", hope to reach an agreement with the officials of the City of Buenos Aires.
For the moment,
the provisional solution that was proposed to them was to spend a week in a transit hotel
.
The problem for the victims is that they expect a definitive but not an immediate solution.
Many repeat: "Decent housing."
In the meeting between the neighbors, several point out that, so far, neither the Ombudsman's Office nor the Ombudsman's Office appeared.
Others denounce the lack of chemical toilets on Avenida Rivadavia for those who are still there, attached to the building that could once again suffer a fall.
At the end of the afternoon, Juan Carlos Moriconi, the City Fire Chief, explained that the work on the area of the collapsed building would be stopped for hours due to the possible danger
of a new collapse
.
Therefore, the search for the only missing person was put on hold until the fire department can provide itself with more advanced tracking tools.
MG
look too
Landslide in Floresta: the partner of one of the victims hugged their 19-day-old baby and saved him in the middle of the tragedy
The day-to-day life of the collapsed house in Floresta: "People of all ages lived there, with children who went to school"
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