Five dead, 16 missing in Río buildings collapse

Rescuers on Thursday recovered five bodies from the rubble of three buildings that collapsed in downtown Río de Janeiro, and at least sixteen people remain missing.

The buildings, one 20 floors high, collapsed on Wednesday night in a cloud of dust and smoke just one block away from the city's historic Municipal Theater.

Rescue teams pulled six people alive from the rubble, but at least 16 people were still missing, authorities said. The buildings were mostly used for office space during the day and were almost empty at the time of the disaster.

Río de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes said the cause of the collapse could have been a structural failure caused by work being done on one of the buildings. He said there was no gas leak that could have caused an explosion.

"The work on one of the buildings could have been the cause. They could have bungled it. That's one hypothesis but it is speculation," Paes told CBN radio broadcaster. "We will investigate this fully, because it is not normal for a building to collapse," he said.

The building collapses come months after an explosion apparently caused by a gas leak ripped through a restaurant in downtown Río, killing three people and igniting more concern about the state of the city's infrastructure.

In recent months, Río's inhabitants have had to deal with exploding sewer lines and landslides in the city's slums caused by heavy rain and deforestation.

The collapsed buildings had a bakery and an Itau Unibanco Holding bank branch on the ground floor and were near the headquarters of state-run companies such as oil giant Petrobras and development bank BNDES.

Witnesses said they heard the structures cracking and saw plaster falling before the buildings collapsed, causing panic in the streets and covering parked cars with dust and debris.

One man said he was on the 10th floor and ran down the stairs just in time to escape the collapse.

"My wife was inside. I spoke with her just before the collapse," another man in tears said on television.