It may not have been his dream, but Gift Kasonda was happy to have worked as a laborer on a construction site in the coastal town of George, South Africa. A recent high school graduate, he had emigrated from Malawi last year and hoped to save money for college, said his uncle, Gracium Msiska.
Now his family wonders if those hopes have been dashed. The four-story building under construction where she worked collapsed in a thunderous instant on Monday, killing at least eight people and leaving dozens more, including Kasonda, missing.
As the search for survivors surpassed 72 hours on Thursday, cries for help from beneath the rubble that offered signs of life in the early hours of the collapse faded. But rescuers were still desperately sifting through some 3,000 tons of concrete. As of Thursday afternoon, 29 of the 37 people rescued from the rubble had survived and 44 were still missing, according to authorities.
Investigators have only just begun work to try to figure out what caused the building to collapse. For now, many relatives of the missing, like Msiska, are focused on the race against time to find survivors, enduring sleepless nights and simply praying for the best.
Msiska said his nephew, who is 18 or 19, arrived in South Africa last October and settled in the same township outside George where he has lived since 2019, when Msiska himself came from Malawi in search of economic opportunities. . .
“You know, life at home is very difficult,” Msiska said by phone. “I was trying to survive. He’s still a kid, he’s still chasing his dreams. “We were all happy.”
While returning home from work on Monday, Msiska said, he received a call from his sister, who was crying so hard she couldn’t understand what she was saying. She was able to discern from another person that the building where her nephew worked had collapsed.
He said he ran to the scene, where he found his sister inconsolable. Many other family members of the workers who had been in the building were also there, praying and being comforted by the social workers.
Msiska said he was shocked to see the building: piles of concrete fallen to the ground.
“I couldn’t believe there were some people alive,” he said.
But there was hope in those initial hours. Rescuers were able to hear noises beneath the surface and were able to locate the victims. Some of the trapped workers were able to make phone calls to their loved ones and authorities. Little by little, people were pulled out of the rubble… alive.
One day after the collapse, Vuyokazi Fuba received a phone call that ended what had been a terrifying, tear-filled 24 hours: it was his brother, Lunga Sindelo, 32, calling from the hospital to say he had survived the collapse. .
He rushed over to see him, he said. He was physically unharmed, she said, but mentally he was struggling. He was very quiet and still looked scared.
Ms Fuba said he told her he heard a noise and then the building started shaking. The next thing she knew, all the cement had collapsed around her and she was in the dark, crying. One person died in front of him, Ms. Fuba said he told her.
“I’m not good,” she remembered her brother telling her. She has since gone to Cape Town, where her other sister lives, for counselling, Fuba said.
George, with a population of almost 300,000, lies in the shadow of the Outeniqua mountain range along the Indian Ocean. It is part of the Garden Route, a panoramic route that attracts many tourists.
The building that collapsed was intended to house two-bedroom apartment units that were selling for around 1.7 million rand each (around $92,000), according to local media reports. Its inauguration was scheduled for August.
Rescue efforts at the site over the past three days have been complicated by the instability of the massive amounts of concrete that accumulated around an elevator shaft in a volcano-like mound, according to Colin Deiner, chief management officer. of disasters for the western region. Cape Province, which is leading the rescue operation. He said demolition crews were brought to the site Thursday to help remove the concrete.
Deiner said there were about 200 people on the search team. They had been using seismic equipment and search dogs to try to locate the victims, she said, but they were no longer picking up any sounds beneath the rubble. On Monday they spoke with a trapped worker who called from his cell phone, but they had not yet been able to reach him, Deiner said.
Although by international standards the effort should move from rescue mode to recovery mode after three days, Deiner said, he was hopeful that some of the victims could survive longer.
In the meantime, Msiska said, he is receiving many calls from relatives in Malawi.
“Everyone is waiting for the good news,” he said. “And now, I’m even tired of answering calls from home because I have nothing to explain.”
Still, Msiska said, he remains optimistic that good news will come.
“We still have hope,” he said, “and we trust in God.”