Indonesian rescuers were scrambling on Tuesday (Sep 30) to locate 38 people feared trapped under rubble after an Islamic boarding school collapsed in the province of East Java while dozens were at afternoon prayer, disaster mitigation authorities said.
One person was killed and 102 evacuated in Monday’s incident at the Al Khoziny school in the town of Sidoarjo when the unstable building collapsed during construction, the disaster mitigation agency said in a statement.
“This sudden occurrence caused building material to fall on dozens of students and workers,” agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said.
A bulldozer was among the heavy equipment he said searchers were using to shift the rubble, while nearly 80 injured were taken to hospital.
Video images from news channel KompasTV showed families of students clustered around a whiteboard looking at a list of survivors.
The agency said the building’s foundations allegedly could not support the weight of construction on its fourth floor.
Abdus Salam Mujib, one of the heads of the boarding school, said that the building had collapsed after workers poured concrete for the third floor of the building.
“The building only had three floors. The plan was to have four floors with a flat roof,” he told reporters.
“Upper levels of the building were planned to be used for classrooms and student activities, while the lower floor was already used as a prayer room.”
