The Spanish city of Badalona is in shock.
Three people, including two young parents, were found dead on Wednesday under the rubble of a building which partially collapsed on Tuesday in this town in northeastern Spain, authorities announced.
The interior of this five-story residential building fell apart on Tuesday shortly after 10:30 a.m. (09:30 GMT) in Badalona, a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants located north of Barcelona.
Images posted online by firefighters showed a gaping hole going from the top floor to the ground floor of the building, whose facade is however intact.
The reasons for this collapse have not yet been established.
In Badalona, #GRAE #Bomberscat han assegurat l'escenari perquè les endowments puguin entered the edifici esfondrat del c/ del Canigó i commençar a treure'n runa pic.twitter.com/4cEHp20lnm
— Bombers (@bomberscat) February 6, 2024
“We located three lifeless bodies in the building that collapsed in Badalone,” firefighters wrote in a message published on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
It is a man and two women, the mayor of Badalone, Xavier Garcia Albiol, told local media.
A single woman, mother of two little girls
One of these women, from “an eastern (European) country”, “had two little girls” with whom she lived alone, he said.
She was reported missing on Tuesday when she failed to pick up her daughters from school, he added.
“We will do everything necessary” to take care of these two little girls, who find themselves “all alone,” promised the mayor.
Also read: Collapsed building in Marseille: “We heard it like a bomb”
The deceased man, aged around thirty, had recently become a father.
His wife had left the building with their baby half an hour before the collapse, according to the mayor.
The latest victim is a woman in her fifties.
The town hall of Badalone indicated on X that it had decreed three days of mourning.
Nineteen teams of firefighters took turns all night, accompanied by sniffer dogs, to find these three people, manually clearing 60 cubic meters of rubble.
According to local media, the building, which included 20 apartments, was built in 1959 and had recently undergone a security inspection.