Residents of more than 100 apartments are out of their homes after the closure of a residential building with 133 apartments in Praia Grande, a city on the coast of São Paulo.
The building was evacuated in the early afternoon of Tuesday (13) after Civil Defense technicians identified a structural collapse in three columns of the building. The problem was found underground. There are no injuries.
The construction company JR, responsible for the work, will reimburse accommodation costs for February 13th and 14th. The company also provided 16 rooms in a hotel in the city.
This Thursday (15), the family allocation process continues, seeking alternatives for those who have pets. There is no expected return to the building.
The resident of the sixth floor of the building, Lúcia de Lima Silveira, is undergoing chemotherapy in São Paulo and is waiting for the firefighters to remove her clothes from the building so she can continue her treatment in the capital.
“Now I need to go in to get my clothes. How do I wear shorts and flip-flops to chemotherapy?” she told CNN the resident.
Lucia still remembers the moment of evacuation. She was at home and her husband was in the sauna. He returned to the apartment shouting “come on, come on, come on!”
“Not even he knew what had happened. When we got down, the people were all here, ambulance, police, rescue and Civil Defense. Little ladies who live on the 19th floor, people limping who had to go down the stairs, it was crazy! No one was hurt, but it was still a scare,” she recalls.
Lucia also says that many people who were in the building were not residents, they just rented apartments because it was close to the beach. “We found out that people left with the clothes on their backs and left everything there and went to São Paulo”, she reports.
In a statement, the condominium said that the “focus of work on the building is the continuity of studies into what may have caused the incident and the preparation, by the construction company JR, of the intervention and repair plan to be presented to the authorities. Only after approval will work begin and we will know the expected construction time.”
See images of the damaged columns:
Source: CNN Brasil
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