The search continues today for 72 people who are still unaccounted at the site of the collapsed State Audit Office high-rise. One more body was recovered from the debris late last night, bringing total confirmed dead to 15 at that location.
The decedent, whose gender could not be confirmed, was transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Police General Hospital for identification.
Thai and foreign rescue teams worked in shifts throughout last night, using sniffer dogs and heavy machinery, including two 600-tonne cranes, to lift huge concrete blocks to advance the search for those still missing.
A rescue official admitted that the teams are limited in the amount of heavy machinery they can use at the same time, because they could cause heavy pieces of buried debris to become displaced.
Meanwhile, relatives of those still missing have been waiting anxiously outside the site, waiting for news of their loved ones.
Among the 15 confirmed dead, eight are males, six females. The gender of another is yet to be confirmed.
About 100 workers were inside the building when it collapsed on March 28th, due tremors from a major earthquake which struck near Mandalay at 1.20pm.
Meanwhile, the Building Control Office of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has received more than 15,500 submissions from people seeking consultation and assessment of damage to their houses and condos caused by the quake.
Pattanathep Kruacha-aim, director of the Building Control Office, said that their engineers, the Council of Engineers and the Engineering Institute of Thailand, who are working at City Hall on a rotation basis, have already responded to about 12,300 of them.
He said that the next step is for building inspectors from the relevant district offices to conduct on-site visits to assess the damage.
More than 400 buildings have been inspected so far. Two have been classified as being in the “Red” category and 68 as “Yellow”, said Pattanathep, without elaborating on what the colour coding means in reality.
