In Argentina, one dead and at least 7 missing in the collapse of a hotel under construction

Nearly 300 rescuers, aided by drones and probe dogs with cameras and microphones, were still working in the afternoon, 15 hours after the start of operations, to carefully clear the rubble, AFP noted.

Early Tuesday morning, they found the body of an octogenarian, as well as a seriously injured septuagenarian who was airlifted, Javier Alonso, Minister of Security of the province of Buenos Aires, where Villa Gesell is located, told the press.

The building "imploded, it fell on itself. The top three floors of the ten in the tower fell onto the adjacent building," Alonso told AFP. "The neighbors heard a crack, a vibration in the ground and a few minutes later, it collapsed."

These first two victims, who were quickly found, lived in the adjacent building, 25% of which was crushed by the collapse of the building located a few minutes' walk from Villa Gesell beach.

According to the municipality, the building, normally an apartment hotel, collapsed around 01:00 a.m. "Between 7 and 9 people", including "workers who were working on a clandestine construction site", "without municipal authorization", could be among the missing people.

Minister Alonso confirmed this estimate of "between 7 and 9" people missing, after several hours of uncertainty about the real number of people potentially under the rubble, because the building at the time of the collapse "was not functioning as a hotel".

"Structural modification"

On the mountain of rubble, dogs climbed the stacked floors, and rescuers moved at a measured pace for "work that is done by hand, because there are people down there, and we can't move with machines," Hugo Piriz, commander of the fire brigade, explained to AFP.

This is how they recovered the injured victim on Tuesday morning: "We were silent, we heard a sound of a blow on a pipe, then as we approached we could hear the voice. A hard job lasting several hours," stressed Hugo Piriz.

Rescue operations "will be slow" because several layers of rubble have to be removed, warned Minister Alonso, insisting however that in similar accidents, "people have been found alive up to a week later."

"Time is passing, but I want my little one alive, I want my son alive, whole!" Silvana Perhauc, who presented herself as the mother of one of the missing children, told journalists.

The construction of the "Dubrovnik Hotel" had been stopped for the first time in August by the municipality. Superficial works (painting, floor covering) had since been reauthorized, but "structural modifications were allegedly carried out irregularly and illegally in the part that collapsed", the municipality stressed.

The president of the Villa Gesell hoteliers' association told TN that he had visited the hotel ten days ago and found that the owners had "drilled through the slab of a second floor" to install an elevator.

The building site manager and two masons have been taken into custody as part of the investigation which is beginning, according to judicial sources quoted by the daily La Nacion.

Villa Gesell is a seaside resort of about 40.000 inhabitants, 350 km south of Buenos Aires, on the Atlantic coast, which lives mainly from tourism, and which swells with tens of thousands of vacationers each summer, in particular a young and festive clientele.