At least three students were killed and dozens left trapped under the rubble after a school collapsed in Indonesia on Tuesday.
A dormitory building at al-Khoziny Islamic boarding school in East Java province that was undergoing an allegedly unauthorised expansion collapsed at around 3pm during afternoon prayers, disaster mitigation authorities said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, “the number of victims is 102 people, including 99 survivors and three deaths,” said Mohammad Syafii, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, with all those pulled out alive taken to hospital for assessment.
Another 38 people, many of them teenage boys, remained trapped under the rubble.
A 15-year-old student from Surabaya was identified as among those killed, disaster mitigation agency officials said.
Earlier some 65 pupils were listed as missing on a noticeboard at the disaster management command post set up at the school. They were mostly boys aged between 12 and 17.
“This sudden occurrence caused building material to fall on dozens of students and workers,” said Abdul Muhari, spokesperson for the Sidoarjo Disaster Management Agency.
Footage aired by local news channel KompasTV showed relatives of the students swarming over a whiteboard on which names of the missing were displayed.
“Oh my God, my son is still buried. Oh my God, please help!” a mother cried out after seeing her child’s name on the board.
The room was filled with the cries of family members whose relatives had suffered a similar fate.
“Please, Sir, please find my child immediately,” a father said, crying and holding the hand of one of the rescue workers.
According to the Disaster Management Agency, the dormitory building’s foundations were not strong enough to bear the weight of construction taking place on the fourth floor.
“The old building’s foundation was apparently unable to support two floors of concrete, and collapsed during the pouring process,” said provincial police spokesperson Jules Abraham Abast.
Mr Syafii said an excavator and a crane were among the heavy equipment being used by searchers to shift the rubble.
The search and rescue operation for the missing was hampered by the presence of heavy slabs of concrete and parts of the building being unstable, Nanang Sigit, an official leading the effort, said.
“We’ve been running oxygen and water to those still trapped under the debris and keeping them alive while we work hard to get them out,” he said, adding that heavy equipment was not being deployed at the moment because of the risk of further collapse.
Mr Sigit said rescuers had spotted several corpses under the rubble but were focused on saving those who were still alive.
