George building collapse: Challenges, priorities and key observations - By Colin Deiner

By Colin Deiner, chief director, Disaster Management and Fire Brigade Services, Western Cape Government

The structural collapse incident, which occurred at 75 Victoria Street in George, Western Cape, on 6 May 2024, drew wide attention from across South Africa and even in other parts of the world. Large numbers of people followed the incident on live television news channels, the internet and social media, waiting to see if more people were being rescued as the rescue operation progressed over eleven days that it took to finally hand the site over to the responsible authorities. The structure, initially planned as a five-storey building with forty-two apartments and an underground basement for parking vehicles, suffered a catastrophic collapse during its construction phase. The building was supported by pillars in the basement and weight-bearing walls.

The location of the site is particularly notable, situated in the heart of George's town centre, less than a block away from York Street, the city's main thoroughfare. Across the road from the collapsed building site stands the George Municipality main building, highlighting the centrality and urban context of the area.

While the contractors were applying the final changes to the building just after 14h00 on that Monday afternoon a sudden and catastrophic collapse of the entire structure occurred leaving a large number of construction workers injured and trapped on the surface or at different points in the structure. The first official responders to the incident were the George Fire Department and the local base of the Western Cape Emergency Medical Services. Upon arrival they found a chaotic scene with a large number of injured victims inside a stifling cloud of concrete dust and mangled scaffolding surrounding the layers of collapsed floors.

For any fire department in the world this would have been a daunting prospect however the initial actions taken by the first in commanders and managers of the fire department and medical rescue services paved the way for a smooth escalation of operations into a major rescue operation involving several hundreds of rescuers from across the province. The George Fire Chief, Mr Neels Barnard and the regional Emergency Medical Rescue head, Mr Richard Botha made the early call to escalate the incident to the provincial authorities. The Provincial Disaster Management Centre (PDMC) immediately convened an emergency meeting where it was decided to activate the Provincial Urban Search and Rescue unit, which is station at the Breede Valley Fire and Rescue Service, the Provincial EMS heavy rescue unit and the City of Cape Town’s technical rescue unit. An offer was also accepted from the South African Police Rescue Unit, who also responded upon the approval of that request.

Understanding that most of the above units would take upwards of five hours to reach George from Cape Town arrangements were being put in place to remove the visible and reachable patients and to prepare for a protracted operation that would have to be performed during the hours of darkness. The also prepared to ensure that the teams arriving from Cape Town would be able to hit the ground running by setting up briefings when they arrived.

The first arriving units were briefed on the initial priorities, which was to locate the known victims and release them. Establishing command over several responding agencies was one of the initial challenges however the presence of a large number of experienced rescuers who had cooperated on many previous emergency operations resulted in this being addressed and by early morning a solid command system had been established which ensured a safe and effective operation with clear goals and objectives.

The initial command priorities were set as follows:

• Site sectorisation• Structural stabilisation• Access known victims• Patient removal and emergency care (live victims prioritised)• Identification of possible voids• Further void exploration• Using intelligence plans to identify location of possible victims• Scaffolding removal• Debris removal to off-site location

Two serious challenges facing incident command was the substantial number of unstable scaffoldings, which has collapsed alongside the building and causing stability and access problems for the rescuers and the volumes of debris that was being removed from the site. On Tuesday (Day two) morning, it was decided to remove all the scaffolding as well as two storage containers that were located on the street (front) side of the collapsed structure. This allowed a safer and unimpeded access to the site.

The removal of debris to an off-site location was a crucial decision for several reasons. The first being that the site was surrounded by a street and other (residential and business structures which provided limited open space. Secondly, in many structural collapse incidents in the past, where there was no debris management plan, rescue teams had, in their haste to recover victims, tended to remove debris of one part of the structure and place it right next to where they were working, often right on top of trapped victims. It would then seriously delay accessing these previously undetected victims. In this incident a site was identified near the George airport several kilometres away. Although this required more heavy trucks it ensured a tidy area which resulted in the incident being concluded in a brief time.

Victim location

After the removal of the surface victims in the first few hours of the operation the initial location of trapped victims became the priority. Victims had been heard tapping and shouting at four separate teams and teams then had to determine the exact location of these victims. The first action was to try and contact the victims and, in that way, try to determine their position and condition. Thereafter, one search and rescue canine would be deployed to search the area followed by a second canine. The practice on a second dog verification is used as it has been experienced that canines might generate a false positive scent if they get exhausted from having worked for an extended period. In a structural collapse scenario, canines might only respond positively at the opening of a void where the victim is trapped and, not necessarily, right at the victim. This is because the concrete structures density would impede the flow of the victim’s scent.

In this case the search team should analyse the structural components and try to form a picture of where the collapsed voids might be. Drilling a series of core holes in that area might provide a better indication of the victim’s location.

The decision to extend the rescue phase of the operation for as long as possible necessitated the extended use of seismic and acoustic listening devices which detected movement and, where teams were able to communicate with victims they were encouraged to tap with bricks or similar items at short intervals to assist the teams to locate them. A remarkable story that unfolded during the first two days was when trapped victim was able to send text messages to this parent indicating he was alive and giving an approximate indication of his position. His father then made his way to the

site and showed the messages to the rescuers. Contact was made with him, and he was advised to turn off his phone and only turn it on periodically to save battery life. Through this form of communication he was successfully rescued on the evening of Tuesday, 10 May 2024.

The victim location process involves a scientific method where evaluating the event that led to the collapse and the subsequent condition of the collapsed structure plays a key role. There are six questions that must be answered which should then provide a guide for incident command to plan the search operation:

• Time of day? – In this case (14;09) workers were on site and just resuming work after their lunch break. Some had not yet returned from lunch.

• Time of year? – May in the Southern Cape is at the onset of winter which could result in colder temperatures at night, and this could impact any trapped survivors.

• For what was the building used? – A five-storey residential complex in the final stages on construction: expect building materials, new concrete and similar features. Victims will be mostly construction workers.

• What did the building look like? - Building plans were accessed early which gave a good indication of the building features.

• How did the structure collapse? - Pancake collapse with little void formation

• How and when was the building constructed? – New building.

Site sectorisation

To streamline the incident command process and to better coordinate the considerable number of rescuers that were arriving over the following days the site was divided up into six sectors with each sector designated a commander for a particular work period. This allowed for the allocation of resources to be prioritised and ensured that everyone was made aware of the location of access and egress paths, safe areas (in the event of an evacuation), heavy vehicle movement routes and equipment staging areas. The INSARAG structure marking system was also implemented and proved to be an important indicator of the location of seriously trapped, deceased victims.

Engineering challenges

Already in the initial stages of the operation it became clear that the expertise of structural engineers would be a critical factor. To this end the George municipality deployed its head of engineering and his staff to the site. A number of private structural engineers also volunteered their help and were deployed to the various sectors to advise on structural stability and safe debris removal. Early on day two of the incident a call was made to Professor Richard Walls of Stellenbosch University to make his way to George to advise on the delayering of the large concrete floors and the stability of the structure, particularly the lift shaft which was supporting a number of collapsed floors and was causing serious stability challenges. An additional team of engineers was also appointed by the Western Cape Premier with the specific purpose of investigating the cause of the collapse. An agreement was reached with this group that they would be allowed to investigate the scene and collect evidence alongside the rescue operation but that the removal of trapped victims would be the priority.

Some of the challenges confronting the engineers included the quantity of rubble and thickness of slabs, large flat slabs stacked on top of each other making access difficult, rebar fracture, the partially collapsed scaffolding, which was removed on day two and a parking garage roof next to the structure which consisted of asbestos sheeting which had to be removed before access could be achieved from the rear of the building.

Two particularly difficult problems were the unstable retaining wall which surrounded the structure and the continuous movement of the floors as work was being done on and around them. After a thorough search of the trench that had formed around the retaining wall it was decided to fil it up with building rubble, which had the advantage of stabilising wall and creating a platform for heavy machinery to move over.

A series of cracks that had formed at various times during the early operation were marked with spray paint which enabled the engineers to detect any unwanted movement.

Fatality management

The Forensic Pathology Services of the Western Cape Health Department were among the first responders on the scene and immediately prepared to receive and process a large number of fatalities. This incident command team had determined that there was a good chance that several people could still be alive and for this reason it was decided to prioritize live victims. Compounded entrapments of deceased victims would only be done when an area was cleared of live victims. When a deceased victim was located and it was found that the removal would take up several hours that area was marked and secured and returned to later.

Although the collapsed structure was primarily a rescue site it was also considered a crime scene where the police were needing to collect and record evidence with a good chance of crucial evidence being destroyed by rescue crews. It was here where the deployment of the SAPS rescue team and divers by the provincial headquarters was of immense value. These members are trained in the protection of evidence and work with municipal and provincial rescue services often. They functioned as the link between the police forensic investigators and the rescue teams to ensure that both could achieve their objectives.

As the incident progressed past 24-hours a temporary victim area was constructed out of view of the media and public where recovered bodies could be taken for processing before, they were transported to the government mortuary facility.

Ongoing operations

The initial decision to stay in “rescue mode” for the first 72-hours ensured that eleven victims were rescued from compound entrapment situations on day one and two and with the arrival of a specialised demolition team from Cape Town late on day three it was decided to extend rescue mode for a longer period. This proved to be the correct decision and proved to be so when the last live victim was rescued after 166 hours on Saturday, 11 May 2025.

The identification of two large voids on the back and left side of the building on day three allowed rescue teams to enter the basement where they progressed slowly, shoring the roof with temporary shores as they moved forward. This was a particularly hazardous mission, and additional precautions had to be taken by the teams to deal with the possible lack of oxygen in the voids. Unfortunately, no victims were found in these voids and the mission was aborted when a team encountered a wall in the basement, which impeded their progress.

The transition to heavy demolition equipment was carefully planned and steps were taken to ensure that any paths cleared for the movement of the demolition vehicles had already been signed off as clear of any victims. A team of lookouts were also delegated to each vehicle to ensure that no bodies would accidentally come into contact with equipment and suffer damage as a result. The working procedure that was decided on commenced with the sector commander determining the path of movement for the heavy machinery, consisting of a tractor loader backhoe or digger (TLB) and tipper trucks, which would then move into position under the supervision of the lookout team leader. The TLB would then carefully work through its designated area and clear debris until the next floor had been reached. Search teams would then move into position and core drill a number of index holes after which the canines would be sent over the area. In the event of a positive indication by the canine, the technical search team would move in with their seismic and acoustic device and attempt to isolate the sound and contact the victim. This process continued throughout the operation and resulted in all victims being successfully located and removed.

Key observations

Due to the high media profile this incident generated both during and after its completion a lot of comment and opinions were offered in the formal media and the various social media platforms. There have naturally also been a fair number of debriefs which has resulted in a range of recommendations on how the response to structural collapse incidents of this scale can be improved. I wish to conclude with some of those recommendations.

Capacity is the key to rapid and successful disaster response

Over the last 15 years the Western Cape emergency services (Provincial Disaster Management, Department of Health EMS and city of Cape Town) have invested heavily in training and equipment to deal with large scale sudden onset disasters. The system has often been tested by the devastating seasonal flooding experienced every winter. Having this capability available on 6 May 2024 was the biggest contributor to the success of the operation.

Rapid response is invaluable

The response by the emergency services in George as well as the rapid activation of provincial resources from as far afield as Cape Town and Breede Valley ensured that many surface and partially entrapped victims were saved early on which contributed to their recovery.

Clear Incident Command must be established early

The Provincial Government implemented an incident command system (ICS) which has been used to manage many large scale wildfire operations in recent years and was also used to management the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2017 “Day Zero” drought. This system is designed to provide clear guidance and objectives to incident commanders and can provide scalability when an incident scope is expanded to the level where large numbers of responders are involved.

Staff/equipment management must be ongoing

The reason for the tempo of the operations being maintained over such an extended period was due to the rotation of rescue crews for the duration of the incident. Teams would work for a pre-determined work period and was then required to leave the site completely where they would rest and be fully prepared to return for their next shift. An equipment maintenance area was also provided for where immediate field repairs and maintenance was done by experienced rescuers.

Constant safety and strategy re-evaluation

Constant safety and strategy re-evaluation as the structure is dismantled; as the structural members are removed and concrete/steel is cut and breeched, the building will tend to become unstable in certain areas. Constant monitoring and reevaluation are required to ensure that any changes in stability are addressed immediately.

And…Safety is always top priority.

Photos: Deirdré Cloete