adminRIGA. – Rescuers in Riga retrieved bodies from a collapsed supermarket yesterday and combed the rubble for survivors as the death toll from Latvia’s worst post-Soviet disaster mounted to 45. The roof of the Maxima supermarket smashed down on customers during peak shopping hours around 6:00 pm on Thursday in the Riga suburb of Zolitude.
Rescuers rushed to the scene, but many were themselves trapped when the roof caved in a second time.
“Everything was crashing down: the walls, the roof, everything!” witness Jana told LNT television in Riga, where flags were decorated Friday with black ribbons of mourning.
“I don’t know what happened to the cashiers – if you were sitting down, there is no way you could have got out in time,” she said.
The tragedy shocked the small Baltic state, with the government declaring three days of mourning starting on today and planning a moment of silence on Monday for its deadliest accident since regaining independence in 1991.
“We currently have 45 dead,” state fire and rescue service spokeswoman Viktorija Sembele told AFP.
She said earlier that at least 40 other people were wounded when about 500 square metres of the roof caved in.
Police refused to say how many people were thought to be inside the two-year-old building, and there were fears that teenagers could have been among them as a high school is near the store.
Run by the Lithuanian-owned Maxima chain – Latvia’s number two retailer after Rimi – the supermarket was built in 2011 and was named one of the country’s top three architecture projects that year.
Maxima published a statement on its website saying the company was “overwhelmed and shocked” by the disaster but that it was not yet aware of the cause and was providing “all the information at our disposal” to the authorities. – AFP.
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