 |
A
fourth floor balcony rests on the balcony below after collapsing at the Library
Gardens apartment complex in Berkeley, Calif., early Tuesday, June 16, 2015.
Berkeley police say several people are dead and others injured after the
balcony fell shortly before 1 a.m., near the University of California,
Berkeley. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
|
A fourth-floor balcony of a San Francisco Bay Area apartment
building collapsed early Tuesday, killing five Irish students and leaving eight
other people injured, officials said.
Irish Foreign Minister
Charlie Flanagan told reporters in Dublin that all five of the dead were in the
U.S. on temporary visas. A 21st birthday party was underway in the building in
the university town of Berkeley at the time of the accident, he said.
AP report continues:
Many of the wounded have
critical, life-threatening injuries, said Officer Jennifer Coats, a Berkeley
police spokeswoman.
Police received a call
about the incident shortly before 1 a.m. PDT Tuesday, and officers arrived to
find that the balcony on the fourth floor of the building had disintegrated.
Television footage showed
that the balcony fell onto the one on the third floor.
The building in the heart
of downtown Berkeley has apartments in the upper floors and retail shops at
ground level. The walkable neighborhood just blocks from the University of
California, Berkeley, is dotted with museums, restaurants, coffee shops and
chain stores.
The Library Gardens
apartments were built in 2006 and are a block from campus, the Los Angeles
Times reported.
Ireland's Department of
Foreign Affairs said it was trying to contact families of the victims and could
not give details of their identities. Four died at the scene and one in a
hospital, Flanagan said.
Irish President Michael
D. Higgins said in a statement that he had "heard with the greatest
sadness of the terrible loss of life of young Irish people and the critical
injury of others in Berkeley, California today. My heart goes out to the
families and loved ones of all those involved."
Coats said officers are
still investigating and she doesn't have information on how the collapse
occurred or what the people were doing on the structure at the time.
Jerry Robinson, who lives
nearby, told San Francisco news station KGO-TV that he had just gotten out of a
movie when two hysterical people flagged down his car asking for a ride to a
hospital to check on injured friends.
"They were all
trying to notify parents, and things like that," he said. "They were
trying to figure out from each other who was on the balcony and what their
condition was."
Police were working with
fire officials and building inspectors to try to determine what caused the
accident, Coats said.
She said she also didn't
have information on the identities of the victims.
"We don't have a lot
of specific detail at this point because they (investigators) are still trying
to work through it all," she said in a telephone interview.
Flanagan said the Irish
consul general in San Francisco would be providing assistance to those
affected.
No comments:
Post a Comment