Supermarket caves in

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33106, 22 December 1972, Page 11

Supermarket caves in

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

RIO DE JANEIRO, December 21. Rescue workers toiled by floodlight through the night, probing the rubble of the supermarket which caved in yesterday, but hopes faded that they could find any more survivors.

The known death toll is 21, including four injured who died in hospital, but a spokesman for the Medical Rescue Service forecast that it would climb to 100.

Rescue teams used hydraulic hoists, cranes, and pneumatic drills to move the mountain of debris which had built a macabre tombstone over customers and staff trapped when the supermarket collapsed like a deck of cards. It was crowded with something like 350 Christmas shoppers when the building, opened only six weeks ago, shuddered, swayed and crumbled.

The rescue spokesman believed that many of the bodies not yet recovered were those of clerks and other staff caught in the basement. A policeman, Mr Amilcar Marques Leite, aged 22, three times dashed into the debris amid a fog of dust and each time brought out one of the injured. “I heard voices from below the ruins screaming ‘help’ and ‘Please, dear God, save us.’ There were women and children’s voices. I just ran,” the policeman said. A Roman Catholic priest, Father Motta, gave the last rites to three victims. He heard an old man’s last whisper: “Father please save my daughter. She is still in there.”

A supermarket office girl. Miss Angela Barbosa, aged 20, told how she was trapped on the first floor when “the whole building trembled, then came down.”

Suddenly a miraculous breach opened in the wall and she slipped through to safety. A shopowner, Mr Joao Ribeiro Guimaraes, who lives next door, said: “It was like an earthquake. The building just caved in slowly. Then people came running, dozens and dozens, screaming, bleeding, and as they ran some of them were struck by falling pieces; others were buried. It was like the end of the world.” Those who died included the store manager, Mr Djalma Jose de Oliveira, aged 30. Doctors said that he had been suffocated. But at least 20 persons were dragged out alive.

Troops cordoned the site, but a number of suspected looters slipped through and were arrested.

An estimated 150 persons were injured as they escaped from the building, but most of them were only slightly hurt.

Police today questioned the architect of the two-storey building, Mr Miguel Abud. Public works officials said that the cupermarket, 200 ft long and 130 ft wide, was erected in six weeks.