A woman has been recovered from under a collapsed apartment building in central Turkey, state-run media has said. After the 23-year-old’s body was found on Saturday, January 25, search efforts continue to find a final person, believed to be her husband.
Three others were pulled from the wreckage and are being treated in a hospital, the Anadolu Agency reported. The collapse comes amid renewed focus on building safety in Turkey following the deaths of 78 people in a fire on Tuesday that ripped through a 12-storey hotel at a ski resort in the north-western part of the country.
Investigators are examining whether proper fire prevention measures were in place. Interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said 79 people were registered as living in the four-storey apartment block in the city of Konya, about 160 miles south of the capital, Ankara.
Earlier, Mr Yerlikaya confirmed the last two people remaining under the debris were Syrian nationals. He added the cause of the building collapse was not immediately known.
“If there is a fault, negligence or anything else, we will learn it together,” he told journalists. TV images showed emergency workers sifting through a large heap of rubble this morning following the building’s collapse yesterday evening. Anadolu Agency reported that four people were detained as part of the investigation.
The second anniversary of an earthquake to hit southern Turkey and north Syria, killing more than 59,000 people, is now only two weeks away. The high death toll at the time was blamed in part to building safety regulations being ignored.
In 2004, a 12-storey apartment building collapsed in Konya, claiming the lives of 92 people and injuring 30 others. Structural flaws and negligence were blamed for the collapse.
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