Tributes have been paid to five men who were crushed to death when a huge concrete wall collapsed at a recycling site in Birmingham. As investigations into the disaster got under way, rescue services worked through the night to recover the bodies from under tons of rubble at the site in the Nechells area of the city.
The five men, who worked for Hawkeswood Metal Recycling, were killed when a 15ft wall of heavy concrete blocks came crashing down on them on Thursday morning. A sixth man managed a miraculous escape, digging his way out of the debris before alerting co-workers.
Friends and colleagues of the men waited for hours for information about the five dead men, who were Spanish nationals originally from the Gambia. It has emerged that the men, who were agency workers, had all been given the previous day off to celebrate Eid.
One of the victims, named locally as Saibo Sillah, 42, was married and had seven children, including two-year-old twins. The other victims were named locally as Alimamo Jammeh, Ousman Jabbie, Bangaly Dukureh and Mohammed Jagana.
Manka Sawo, who waited at the recycling plant’s gates for news, said they had been alerted to the accident by the injured man, who rang them at about 9am. He said: “It is devastating. I knew one of the men very closely; yesterday we celebrated Eid together. It’s very, very sad. Five of them have lost their lives.”
Sawo added: “We are looking for information. We don’t know what has happened yet. Everybody here is of a different relation – family, friends, cousins – we are all very close.”
Slav Angiyu, a 43-year-old truck driver who was on the site when the accident happened, said: “We were reloading the recycling metal into containers, which will go to China. I was just about to leave and the guys said: ‘Stop, stop, nobody go anywhere. Stay where you are’. They said it was a major accident.
“One of the workers said the wall had crashed. I saw one guy lying on the floor and paramedics were putting a mask on him and talking to him. They were trying to resuscitate him. The police came and told me to leave the truck and escorted me out. My heart goes out to the families of the victims.”
Friends of Jabbie told the Birmingham Mail that he had only moved to the city a week ago and was living with Jammeh. Another friend of the pair told the paper: “He was waiting for his wife and family to come over, who are still in north Gambia. Alimamo’s wife and children are due to arrive on Sunday. They don’t have any phones, so there’s no way of contacting them.
“We will only be able to tell them when they arrive that their husband and father has died. It’s going to leave them heartbroken.”
Kabiro Daboe, 40, also spent Eid with one of the victims. “I came to know him through a brother-in-law of mine,” he told the Birmingham Mail. “All of yesterday, we were together celebrating Eid. He drove us to the mosque. He’s a family man. He’s a good Muslim and prays five times a day. He’s law-abiding. He’s down to earth. I’m sad because we spent the whole day together eating and talking until 9pm.”
The operation to recover the men’s remains was expected to take several hours due to the unstable structure. By late on Thursday night, two bodies had been taken away by private ambulance.
An investigation into the collapse has been started by both the police and the Health and Safety Executive. A spokesperson for the HSE confirmed that its inspectors had attended the scene and would work with police on the investigation.
Det Supt Mark Payne, of West Midlands police, said: “I’ve seen the scene, and nobody is alive in that scene. We have done absolutely everything, as you’d expect, to check there is no opportunity to save a life. Without being too graphic, there’s no possibility of anyone being alive in there.
“We are still in the very early stages of this investigation to determine exactly what happened this morning. Sadly five people have lost their lives and we have several teams of specialist officers supporting their families at this time.
“This has been a very traumatic incident for those who were at the site this morning and we will continue to work alongside the HSE and the other emergency services at the scene.”
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