Apartment building collapses in Moscow killing three

Three people were killed in the center of Moscow as the wall of an old apartment building collapsed burying several people under the rubble. Ten people suffered in the accident: three of them got out of the building themselves and refused from hospitalization. Three others suffered various injuries and were pulled out from under the rubble by rescuers. Three people died, Itar-Tass reports.

Photo: Apartment building collapses in Moscow killing three

The apartment building in Moscow ’s Sadovnicheskaya Street partially collapsed on Wednesday (June 17) at 4:45 p.m. A part of the wall and internal flashovers collapsed in the old four-storeyed building burying several guest-workers under the rubble. They were both living and working in the building without any legal reasons for it.

“I was living in this house. It is an old building so it was closed for reconstruction. Nothing was cracking or falling apart in it. I could never imagine that it could collapse. I heard the walls cracking this morning. I ran outside immediately, which saved my life. I would have been buried there too if I had stayed there just a bit longer,” one of the guest-workers said.

Local residents say that they were not surprised with the accident.

“We wrote several letters to the prefect asking the authorities to finally demolish the shabby and dangerous building. There is a school nearby, and our children go to school passing this building by every day. Fires would occur there on a regular basis,” a woman living in a neighboring building said.

Experts concluded that the building collapsed because of the unauthorized enlargement of the basement of the building. The workers were working in the basement when the wall of the building tumbled down.