4 dead, 17 mostly workers still missing, in collapse of unfinished hotel

Rescuers pulled out three people yesterday from an immense pile of rubble that was all that remained of a nine-story hotel which collapsed while under construction in a northern Philippine city, bringing the death toll to four with 17 others still missing, officials said.

Two of the men were dead, while emergency personnel struggled in the early morning hours to revive one in an ambulance near the pile of concrete slabs, twisted iron bars and aluminum scaffoldings that was all that remained of the building in Angeles City of Pampanga Province. They eventually gave up and drove away.

The poignant scene was witnessed by a small group of journalists, including from The Associated Press, who watched hundreds of rescuers led by firefighters and police scrambling for hours to extricate the men, who were at the time alive but trapped under concrete slabs and iron bars.

Rescuers tried to provide water and medicine intravenously to one of the trapped men in a desperate effort to keep him alive in the scorching summer heat, regional police chief Brig. Gen. Jess Mendez told the AP.

“He never made it despite all the efforts,” he said.

One of the three people pulled out from the rubble on Monday was unidentified and was not on the list of the 17 missing, who were mostly construction workers, according to Angeles city information chief Jay Pelayo.

The fourth dead victim was a Malaysian tourist trapped in a budget inn that was partly hit by the avalanche of debris from the collapsed building. Another guest at the inn was injured but managed to dash out, officials said.

A day after the unfinished building collapsed with a loud crashing sound after a fierce thunderstorm, Angeles City Mayor Carmelo Lazatin said rescue efforts would still not be shifted to a body retrieval operation.

“My best hope is that we can rescue more people alive,” Lazatin told the AP. “We don’t want to give the families of the trapped workers any bad news.”

Anxiety and fear among relatives of the trapped workers, who are waiting in sheds near the rubble, have deepened.

“I’m losing hope because of what I see — slow rescue work,” said Lea Mendoza Casilao, a 47-year-old sardine factory worker whose boyfriend, a mason, was among those still trapped in the rubble.

She brought a week’s supply of rice and sardines for him at the construction site, but she said they would never meet as scheduled over the weekend after the building where he was sleeping crumbled before dawn on Sunday.

Lazatin said rescuers were moving carefully because huge slabs of concrete were being held up precariously by a tangle of aluminum scaffolding and could crash down on rescuers.

Twenty-six workers were either rescued or managed to run out of the collapsing building, where they slept on pieces of plywood on the ground floor.

National police chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. said his force will support an “ongoing investigation to determine the cause of the incident and possible violations of safety and building regulations.”

Angeles City hosted one of the largest U.S. Air Force bases outside of the American mainland, helping turn Angeles and outlying cities and towns into entertainment and commercial hubs in the main northern Philippine region of Luzon. MDT/AP