Five workers were killed and three seriously injured after part of a building collapsed on a construction site in Florence, Italy
It happened Friday morning when a prefabricated concrete beam and slabs collapsed at the site of a supermarket project, burying eight workers under rubble, Associated Press reports.
Luca Cari, a spokesperson for Vigili del Fuoco, the Italian firefighting service, said the mass of the rubble was “enormous” and it would take time to clear the site.
Rescue teams extracted three workers and took them to local hospitals, where they were reported to be in serious but stable conditions.
On Saturday, the president of the Tuscany region confirmed that the body of a fifth person had been retrieved after rescue teams continued rescue operations.
Italian media reported that the five victims were an Italian man, three Moroccans and a Tunisian.
Three others who were pulled from the debris were taken to hospital in serious but not life-threatening conditions.
Officials said after preliminary assessments of the site suggested that a “structural collapse” of the concrete beam caused the tragedy.
Florence prosecutors have ordered an investigation.
Pope Francis was joined by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and other Italian officials in expressing grief for the deaths.
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Our great sympathy with victims families and their relatives. We expect sooner the investigation clear the causes of this incident so as to be documented as lessons learned and we as engineers will be waiting for it.