A seven-storey residential building collapsed on Sunday afternoon in the Sidi Gaber district of Alexandria. This incident is the latest in a series of similar tragedies over the past few years in the Mediterranean city. Dwellers of the building, alerted by sudden cracks, evacuated shortly before its collapse. No deaths or injuries have yet been reported. General Mohamed Nassar, head of the Civil Defence Department in Alexandria, said rescue teams were searching for survivors among the rubble, suspecting that some of the residents may not have left the building in time. Nassar suggested the building may have collapsed as a result of construction work next to it, which had ramifications for surrounding buildings. Last February, a three-storey residential building in Alexandria’s district of Muharram Bek was also affected by construction work taking place in an adjacent building, according to official state news agency MENA. The collapse of buildings in Alexandria has become commonplace, owing to several factors, including their age, illegal extensions and corruption between officials and landlords in regulating the housing sector within heavily-populated areas. On 16 January, a building collapsed in Al-Maamoura district killing twenty-eight and injuring at least eleven more. In 2008, at least eleven were killed in Alexandria after a four-storey building collapsed at night while residents were sleeping. A similar collapse in July 2012 killed at least nine people, and in October that year, a further four were killed.
Aug262013