Spanish emergency services pulled the body of a teenager from the rubble of a three-story building.
The building had collapsed the night before in the Valencia region, Peñíscola, Castellón.
According to local police, the collapsed building buried three people under its rubble.
Among them was a 20-year-old man whom the services located and hurried for rescue.
The rescue services pulled the man conscious by midnight; they had to clear away the rubble by hand.
Furthermore, the emergency services resumed the search on Thursday for a woman believed to be in the same apartment as the man.
There are still no known reasons why the building collapsed.
The collapse happened on Wednesday evening at around 8 pm.
The 20-apartment building resides in the Font Nova de Peñíscola development.
The Spanish municipality has a gross population of 7,683 people.
However, the number should surge to nearly 100,000 in the summer vacation.
How it happened
The incident took place in two phases, according to witnesses at the scene.
Part of the building cracked before another part 15 minutes later.
Thus, some people were able to leave the area due to this delay.
At midnight and after finding the trapped man, the rescue team of firefighters suddenly hugged each other.
“After he responded to our calls, we tried to ensure he didn’t lose consciousness,” said Fire Chief Carlos Verchili.
“Initially we had no visual contact, just via his words or signals. In the end, we reached him. He was surrounded by wrought iron in a very unstable zone,” he added.
The man was stuck from the neck down and in a small place where he could only move his arm.
A medical team gave the young man a sedative to relieve his shock after the emergency services pulled him out.
Enrique Egea, the Deputy Fire Chief, said he had never seen a building collapse this way.
The building’s integrity
The municipality says there were no explosions involved in the collapse, nor is it related to the building’s constructive structure.
Nine families (nearly 30 people) have had to move from the collapsed building to hotels, relatives’ homes or primary residences.
Specialists from the local council traveled to the collapse site to examine the rest of the buildings.
