Four dead in Spanish resort restaurant collapse

AFP | Mallorca 

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Spanish fire crews picked through the wreckage of a beachfront restaurant on the holiday island of Mallorca yesterday, searching for clues, after it partially collapsed, killing four people and injuring 16. Authorities, who declared three days of mourning, gave no immediate indication as to the cause but said the excessive weight of the building was most likely to blame.

The packed two-storey building collapsed late on Thursday afternoon in the Playa de Palma area south of the capital with the tourist season already in full swing in the Balearic Islands, which also includes Ibiza and Menorca.

“There are four dead and 16 injured,” an emergency services spokeswoman said, lowering the initial toll from around 21 injured. Seven people were injured “very seriously” and nine were seriously injured, emergency services said on the X social media platform.

They were taken to various hospitals in the Meditteranean island’s capital, Palma de Mallorca.

Firefighters were deployed in number, ambulances rushed victims to hospital and the street was sealed off by police to allow rescue teams to work, an AFP journalist saw. One firefighter described a “nightmarish” scene.

He told the Ultima Hora newspaper that when he arrived, people were crying and screaming around the rubble piled up on the ground floor.

Rescuers pleaded for silence so they could listen out for people who could be trapped under the rubble.

The head of the Palma fire service, Eder Garcia, said the street-level floor of the building had collapsed onto a bar in the basement, which is “where we found the most victims”. “The causes are being investigated.

The first hypothesis is that it was possibly due to excessive weight,” he told reporters at the scene. Most of the victims are foreigners, Garcia said without providing details of the nationalities of the victims.

A technical team was due to visit the site yesterday to determine the cause of the collapse of the building, which sits on Calle de Cartago facing the Bay of Palma. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez conveyed his condolences to the victims’ families on X, saying he was “closely following the consequences of the terrible collapse”.

The central government was prepared to send “all the necessary resources” to help the regional authorities cope, he added. Sanchez said he had spoken to the governor of the Balearic Islands region, where Mallorca is located, and to the city’s mayor.