9 dead after building collapses in South Korea: Reports
Firefighters search for survivors following a collapsed building in Gwangju, South Korea, on Jun 9, 2021. (Photo: Chung Hoi-sung/Yonhap via AP)
SEOUL: Nine people died and another eight were seriously injured after a building collapsed in southern South Korea on Wednesday (Jun 9), sending debris falling on a bus, local media said.
Concrete from the building, which was being demolished at the time, buried a bus that was stopped at a station near the construction site, said the Yonhap news agency.
Emergency officers dispatched to the site in the southern city of Gwangju rescued eight people, all seriously injured, the National Fire Agency said in a statement.
It did not say whether the eight people were inside the bus or the building. It was not immediately known whether anyone was in the building when it collapsed.
According to Yonhap, most of the victims were bus passengers. It also said that two cars initially thought to have been also buried under the rubble were later confirmed by authorities to have narrowly escaped the incident.Â
Fire agency officials said they were searching for any other people who might be trapped under the debris.
A video from the scene showed dozens of rescue workers equipped with stretchers and crowbars searching for survivors while excavators hacked at a huge mountain of crumbled concrete and bent steel beams that spilled over a motorway.
