Two small adjacent buildings collapsed on Saturday morning in a shopping street in the centre of Lille, France. The emergency services are now reporting they fear a missing resident may be under the rubble, Belga News Agency reports.
After it was first believed that the collapse had not caused any casualties, authorities believe that a doctor, reported missing, may be underneath the rubble.
"We are almost certain that this person is under the rubble," said Lieutenant Colonel Stéphane Beauventre, in a message broadcast by the emergency operations centre Codis.
"His phone is not answering, his car is in the car park, (...) and he" did not show up for work this morning, he added. "We are concentrating all our efforts on (...) extracting the rubble by hand to access this victim."
Firefighters were still clearing away the rubble into Saturday afternoon, where a dusty mixture of bricks and metal beams, and collapsed scaffolding on the building's facade, early this afternoon.
What happened?
A three-storey building undergoing work collapsed, taking a neighbouring building down with it at around 9.15am in the busy Rue Pierre Mauroy. Fortunately, the collapse was before the shops opened.
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A young man living in the building reportedly arrived home at 3am on Saturday morning and noticed that a wall in his apartment had buckled. After having decided to call security services, the municipal police issued a danger order and evacuated the buildings as a precaution.
Following the collapse, firefighters have spent the day checking nearby buildings for cracks or gas leaks. The cause of the collapse is yet to be determined.
