Samarinda, East Kalimantan/Jakarta. The death toll from the collapse of a half-built shop house in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, climbed to seven on Tuesday as emergency services continued to pull people from the rubble.
“The fifth victim was found this morning at 4:25 a.m.,” Wahyu Widhi Heranata, head of the East Kalimantan Disaster and Mitigation Agency, told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday. “The identity is not yet known as the [recovery] team is still conducting a post-mortem examination.”
Two additional dead were found later in the day.
A search and rescue team consisting of the local first-response agency, military and police found the bodies of Surani and Abdul Maruf at around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, after excavators removed debris.
Two workers died from their injuries earlier on Tuesday.
“Eighty four workers were inside when the building collapsed,” Wahyu said. “Seventy two were found, seven of them are still hospitalized. We’re still searching for seven more victims using excavators. We still hope to find survivors.”
Most of the workers were from East Java.
Dadang Airlangga, the official in charge of approving construction permits in Samarinda, alleged that the collapse was the result of shoddy construction practices caused principally by the shophouse’s weak foundation.
“There’s a major visible difference between the design and the implementation,” he said. “We saw that the construction was supposed to be 100 meters by 50 meters. There was a deviation in the plans — the contractor reduced the size of the steel frame and the cement mix.”
The building is owned personally by Yulianus Ghazali. He did not know which construction company had been employed for the project.
East Kalimantan Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Fajar Setiawan said that no suspects had been named because the focus was still on search and rescue, but that investigators would later gather evidence and decide whether or not to press charges.
“There’s no suspect yet, we’re still focusing on finding victims,” Fajar said. “We prioritize saving human lives first.”
After rescue operations were closed, Fajar said police would summon the owner of the shophouse and the construction company.
From information gathered by the Jakarta Globe’s correspondent in East Kalimantan, the shop house was supposedly built by Firma Abadi, a construction company based in Surabaya. But the company reportedly subcontracted the work to Varia Dwi Tunggal which subcontracted it again to Siswanto who oversaw the construction.
Attempts to contact the companies involved were not successful.
By Camelia Pasandaran & Tunggadewa Mattakilang
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