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Picture Courtesy: (News24) Western Cape Premier, Alan Winder, with the team that rescued 32 year old Gabriel Gaumbe.
(The Post News)- The search and rescue team has found and extracted one worker who has been trapped since Monday afternoon when the multi-story apartment building, which was under construction, collapsed in George, Western Cape. Emergency and disaster officials have been working continuously to try and rescue workers who have been trapped since the building collapsed.
“These teams have been working 24 hours a day. They are highly experienced, and they know what they are doing,” the premier of the Western Cape, Alan Winde, wrote on his Twitter (currently called X) account. He also stated that they know that the rescuers are aware that every minute counts and that their main focus is to save lives, which is why they are working hard to put together resources and expertise. The Western Cape Minister of Health, Nomafrench Mbombo, said it can take half a day or more to successfully extract someone after they have been identified as alive.
According to her, it is important that the mental and emotional wellbeing of the rescue team be taken care of, as the mission they are on can affect them emotionally. Most of the rescued patients are taken to the George Medical Center; this is to ease the pressure on the George Public Hospital. Mbombo and Health Minister Joe Phaahla visited the George Mediclinic on Friday to show support to the victims and their families.
Phaahla said that the incident that has happened in George does not happen often, and it does not only affect George; it is a national tragedy. According to the Garden Rout District municipality disaster manager, Gerhard Otto, the mission on the site of the collapsed building remains a search and rescue mission. Meanwhile, Western Cape chief director for disaster, Colin Deiner, said when the last body of the three bodies that were recovered on Friday afternoon was recovered, they changed from using rescue tools to using more demolition-type tools.
However, they had not reduced resources on site because they still had a couple of voids to search through, even though time was not on their side. On Friday evening, the death toll increased to 13, while on Saturday morning, a survivor was found and successfully extracted from the rubble. “In a possible first in South African rescue history, the trapped worker was found alive 116 hours after the collapse on Monday,” the Western Cape government stated.
It also stated that rescue teams were in communication with him, but it was going to take a while to retrieve him from the rubble as he was trapped, and trauma doctors were on standby to make sure that he got all the medical support he required.Disaster management officials confirmed that a man was found, and when they communicated with him, he said there was weight on his legs. Deiner said it was going to take a while to reach him, and they had given him water and a light.
The team was hopeful that it would recover him alive.Winde said that this was the miracle that everyone was praying for, and he expressed his gratitude to everyone who has been working tirelessly to rescue the trapped workers since Monday. He thanked them for not giving up and said he could not express how relieved and joyful he was. According to George Municipality, this rescue has brought new hope and will to continue with the rescue and recovery operations, and after the rescue team carefully extracted the survivor from the rubble, the onsite medical team stabilized him before he was taken to the hospital.
The municipality also confirmed that the survivor, Gabriel Gaumbe (32), has been in communication with his family, and he is hospitalized in a stable condition. The total number of individuals on site when the building collapsed was 81; 42 have been rescued, and 39 remain unaccounted for. Out of the 42 rescued, 13 were declared dead, and 14 are currently in the hospital.
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