The official death toll from the collapse of the State Audit Office (SAO) building has risen to 36, with the latest body being recovered from the debris late Saturday night. 59 other people are still missing.
Search and rescue teams recovered the remains from zone B of the collapsed building. They have now been taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Police General Hospital for identification.
The rescuers are, however, still unable to reach the source of the light signal, detected about two days ago and believed to have come from a cell phone, due to a huge concrete block and a web of tangled rebar preventing access.
A city official said that the operational plan remains unchanged, with the use of heavy machinery to clear the mountain of debris alternating with search teams, equipped to manually search for survivors and bodies.
Meanwhile, investigators from the Department of Special Investigation, the Central Police Forensic Science Division, accompanied by representatives of the two contractors, Italian Thai Development and China Railway No 10 (Thailand), visited the site to collect more evidence, in their bid to ascertain the exact cause of the building’s collapse.
