Rescuers have pulled more than 100 people out alive from the rubble of a collapsed factory and are searching for an unknown number of others believed still trapped in a disaster that has killed at least 19, officials said yesterday.
Soldiers and rescuers in Lahore were carefully cutting through steel and using cranes to lift the debris of the building, which came crashing down on Wednesday night, less than two weeks after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake rocked the region.
One worker still trapped in the rubble told SAMAA TV early yesterday that he was pinned under a girder, but alive and feeling thirsty. It was unclear how many people were in the building when it collapsed or how many — dead or alive — were still trapped. Officials have put the total number of those involved at about 150 to 200.
Photo: EPA
Rescue services spokesman Jam Sajjad Hussain said it was “difficult” to give a specific number, but said workers had told officials that about 200 people had been inside at the time of the collapse, including the owner, though that was unconfirmed.
“Rescue work is ongoing and I fear that the death toll may increase,” Hussain said.
Factory employee Mohammad Navid said dozens of shift workers could have been sleeping in a part of the building that rescuers had not yet reached and that children as young as 12 had been working in the factory.
“The building caved in with a big bang and I fell unconscious on the ground,” said 22-year-old Navid, who had been employed at the factory for a year.
He said he regained consciousness after about 15 minutes.
“I heard people screaming and shouting for help,” he said.
Mohammad Usman, the top administration official in Lahore who is coordinating the response to the disaster, said that 99 people had been rescued and that they expected to find a “couple” more survivors.
“Just 30 minutes ago we pulled another guy out alive,” Usman said.
The collapse occurred at the four-story Rajput Polyester polythene bag factory in the Sundar industrial estate, about 45km southwest of Lahore’s city center.
The factory could have suffered structural damage in the quake on Monday last week which killed almost 400 people across Pakistan and Afghanistan, Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif said.
“I have heard about the earthquake affecting the building, but according to laborers the owner continued to build an extension,” Sharif told reporters.
“Some of the pillars of the building had been weakened in the earthquake,” Navid said, adding that workers had informed the owner of the problems.
Most of the survivors were injured and Zia Ullah at Jinnah Hospital, where some were taken, said the majority of the victims were young workers, with many suffering head injuries and fractured limbs.
SAMAA TV also broadcast images of a bruised worker being pulled from the rubble who said he was 12 years old.
The army said it was deploying specialist search teams and engineers to help the rescue effort.
Three cranes, a bulldozer and more than 40 emergency rescue vehicles were working at the site, a rescue official said, but provincial spokesman Zaeem Qadri told reporters that progress was slow because the factory was at the end of a narrow lane, making it difficult for excavators to reach the site.
He added that an emergency had been declared at all local hospitals.
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