A construction team narrowly escaped death when a column supporting the roof of a Germiston factory collapsed, injuring 14 people.
On Tuesday morning, the sound of screeching metal and the crash of tons of bricks brought nearby business owners and workers running to a factory under construction opposite Rand Airport.
Fourteen construction workers were hurt, four of them critically, when the mid-section of the factory they were building caved in.
The accident caused tons of steel and bricks to fall, burying some of the construction team under the debris.
It appears that a column holding up the mid-section of the building collapsed just as 12 of the workers were pouring concrete on the roof of the section, which was not secure.
Donovan Strecker, who works at a nearby hangar, was one of the first on the scene as he happened to be driving by at the time of the collapse.
Strecker had first noticed a medic, who apparently worked near the accident scene, running blindly into the road towards the building. The man had been in a panic and had been trying to alert the authorities about the accident. “He was on his phone and (also) trying to remove some of the rubble,” Strecker said.
Soon afterwards, rescue workers from Netcare and Emergency Management Services arrived on the scene, where they began to dig out the trapped workers.
It took almost an hour to stabilise all 14 workers, who were then taken to hospital.
According to Netcare 911 spokesman Jeff Wicks, the four critically injured men had fractures and other serious injuries caused by the falling objects.
Two of the four were taken to the nearby Union Hospital and the other two were went to Milpark Hospital.
Later Wicks reported that the four men were in a stable condition and had no life-threatening injuries.
The less seriously injured men were taken to Union Hospital for treatment. Many of them were released shortly after being examined.
Elize Viljoen, who works at a nearby hangar, said construction had started two or three months ago.
Signs for the construction team’s structural engineers, All A Steel, were plastered on the fence in front of the site.
Nearby business owners said All A Steel had worked on several buildings in the area, but no such accident had occurred before. The company was unavailable for comment. - The Star