A woman killed in the Madrid building collapse died because she’d popped to the loo.
Architect Laura Rodríguez Sabín and three construction workers were fatally trapped inside the six-storey building when it gave way shortly after 1pm on Tuesday (7 Oct).
Laura had a temporary office on the first floor, supervising the conversion of the building into a four-star hotel.
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The collapse happened suddenly while the 30-year-old was in the bathroom on the same floor.
Her office survived, but the bathroom was crushed beneath a mountain of rubble.
A source close to the investigation told local media: “It was sheer misfortune that she stepped out at that moment.”
The three deceased construction workers were named as Moussa Dembele, Diallo Mamadún, and Jorge G.V.P., originally from Mali, Guinea and Ecuador, aged between 30 and 50.
Moussa and Diallo were in basement bathrooms, while Jorge was on the sixth floor when the structure gave way.
Three others escaped with minor injuries.
Firefighters worked through the night to recover all four bodies by the early hours of Wednesday (8 Oct), as reported by Need To Know.
Work on the project had started in February and was progressing slowly due to the building’s age, according to Daniel Anca, head of Anka Demoliciones, which employed the deceased labourers.
He said the tragedy could have been “even greater” as there were “more than 40 workers” inside at the time.
By sheer luck, “many of the workers were outside resting or having a cigarette” when it came down, an anonymous witness said.
Malian builder Doukara Sab told local media: “I’m alive by a miracle. I was upstairs when everything came down and I don’t even know how I got out of there.”
Laura studied architecture at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, where she also played women’s rugby.
Doukara described her as “friendly”, adding: “She was nice – everyone liked her.”
Moussa, 40, was a married father of five who had arrived in Spain two years ago.
Doukara said: “He’d only been working on the site for a few days – I don’t think it was even a week.”
Madrid mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida told reporters on Wednesday: “The building had a degree of instability, and they had to work with monitoring devices installed to ensure the structure wouldn’t collapse.”
He added that “material stacked on the sixth floor” may have contributed to the tragedy.
An investigation is under way.
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