BANGKOK
The death toll from a six-story building’s collapse in a Bangkok suburb has risen to 14, bringing the search for the buried bodies of workers to an end.
Rescue workers recovered the last two victims from Monday's incident at about 11 p.m. Thursday and the site has been cordoned off, the Bangkok Post reported Friday.
The daily cited the director-general of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, Chatchai Phromlert, as saying that all victims had been found. He added that five of the 25 workers injured in the tragedy remained at hospitals.
Among the dead are 11 males and three females, including an eight-month old Cambodian child who was with his mother - a worker on the site.
Once finished, the building was to serve as a student dormitory.
On Tuesday evening, a construction worker was freed alive from the debris after 26 hours under the rubble amid cheers from rescuers. But one of his colleagues died while having his legs amputated to free him from a concrete beam.
Four people were arrested Wednesday for their suspected role in the collapse, including an executive of the company which owns the project, an engineer and a subcontractor. Three more arrest warrants have been issued by a local court against suspects who fled, including the chief contractor.
The collapse is reported to have happened when cement was poured onto the building’s roof deck, which caused the lower floors to collapse.
“The pillars at the edge of the building were not strong enough to support the weight,” Suchatvee Suwansawat, president of the Engineering Institute of Thailand, told the Nation newspaper Wednesday.
Lax safety standards and low wages at Thai construction sites have drawn regular complaints from local and international labor groups.
In one of the most dramatic instances of shoddy construction, the six-storey Royal Plaza Hotel collapsed in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima in August 1993, killing 137 people and injuring 227.
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