New Building Collapses; 10 Die in Mexico

Rescue teams tunneled through tons of concrete today searching for missing victims after four floors of a downtown building collapsed. Police said 10 people were killed and 48 injured.

The rubble buried the ground floor offices of a furniture factory. Authorities said it was not immediately known what caused the building, whose upper floors were under construction, to collapse on Thursday.

“There are about 25 people still missing, believed to be under the wreckage and debris, but the number is not certain,” police radio officer Gilberto Sanchez said in a radio interview. He said earlier Red Cross reports that 18 people were killed and 96 injured were wrong.

Red Cross duty officer Juan Manuel Diaz acknowledged an error in the Red Cross count.

The Red Cross spokesman said rescue workers were digging tunnels through the rubble in an effort to reach the victims, using techniques employed in Mexico City after the huge earthquake of September, 1985.

“Some of the youths begged to be saved as rescuers neared them but others screamed that they wanted to die because they couldn’t stand the pain,” one witness said.

Reinforced Concrete

Diaz and police duty officer Juan Jose Navarro Rincon said the furniture factory was operating while the upper floors were still being built. Both said the building was a reinforced concrete structure.

“From some reports I heard here, they were apparently pouring fresh concrete when it caved in. Apparently the building did not resist the weight,” Navarro Rincon said in a telephone interview.

Local authorities appealed for help from the army and national Red Cross headquarters in Mexico City for special mechanical equipment to cut through the concrete that trapped those inside, said Margarito Rodriquez, a spokesman with the Aguascalientes police department.

He said construction workers were on each of the floors of the unfinished structure when it collapsed at about 5 p.m. Thursday.

Cmdr. Marco Cerilla, chief of the Aguascalientes police department, said personnel from the Mexican army, national Red Cross headquarters and federal public security department arrived to aid search effort.