After Being Trapped for 118 Hours, Survivor Pulled from Collapsed George Building

The man was pulled after being trapped for 118 hours without food or water.

Medics at the scene of the George building collapse on 8 May 2024. Picture: Kayleen Morgan/Eyewitness News

GEORGE - A miracle survivor has been pulled from the ruins of the collapsed building in George.

The man was pulled after being trapped for 118 hours without food or water.

Eighty-one people were caught in the collapse when the building folded on Monday.

Thirty-eight people remain unaccounted for.

Western Cape Disaster Management chief, Colin Deiner: "We started going into the side because the strategy was to clear every floor. We lifted the different floors and we got to quite a solid area. So, over the last two nights, these floors were lifted. At three, we decided to look from the side where the side broke."

Deiner added that the man was responsive and he had been transported to the nearby hospital for treatment.

"He told us he had some weight on his legs, so we were very scared that if we release him too quickly, so we got surgeons in to make sure they work against that and then we broke, we found another hole closer to him, we broke the hole open, cut the rebar out and when we accessed him, we thought it might, because normally what you get is a lot of steel all over the show but, fortunately, that wasn't the case and we probably got him out two hours quicker than we thought."