Police and rescuers work at the site of a collapsed scaffolding in Switzerland – Copyright AFP/File Guillem Sartorio
At least two people were killed and nine injured Friday when scaffolding collapsed off a 19-story building under construction in the western Swiss city of Lausanne, police said.
The collapse at the 60-metre (200-foot) tower on the outskirts of Lausanne shortly before 9:30 am (0730 GMT), sending construction workers plummeting to the ground.
There are “around 10 people involved in this accident, including two people who have died,” regional police spokesman Jean-Christophe Sauterel told reporters at the scene.
Four of those who survived were seriously injured, including one who was airlifted to a nearby hospital.
The spokesman stressed that this was a preliminary toll.
“There are still people missing,” he told Switzerland’s Keystone-ATS news agency.
Emergency services were swiftly alerted and were continuing to search the site for survivors.
On site, AFP journalists saw yellow-clad firefighters clambering on top of a jumble of twisted metal at the foot of the building, amid a sea of ambulances and other emergency vehicles.
Sauterel said the cause of the accident remained unclear.
“We see that the scaffolding across the entire facade has collapsed, but we do not know the causes,” he said, adding that the public prosecutor’s office had opened an investigation.