Elliot Lake mall search halted by threat of collapse

Rescue crews working at a severely damaged Elliot Lake, Ont., mall have been forced to call off their search for a possible survivor because of mounting safety concerns, including the threat of another collapse.

A portion of the roof at the Algo Centre Mall collapsed Saturday afternoon. When the roof gave way, metal and concrete debris crashed through two floors of the shopping centre.

Emergency teams were dispatched to the area and have been searching for a route through the rubble, but that is now being halted.

Bill Neadles, with the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team, said engineers told him the Algo Centre Mall is under strain and too unstable for rescuers to enter safely. Neadles said crews were facing increasingly precarious conditions as they combed the debris for signs of life.

An unstable escalator that forced crews to remove their cranes from the site earlier in the day continued to separate from its supporting beams as the day progressed, he said.

"Realistically, the engineer's telling me he doesn't understand why it hasn't collapsed already," Neadles said. "The building is … totally unsafe."

When asked how many people they believe are inside the rubble-filled portion of the mall, police said they cannot account for two people.

Police confirmed earlier in the day one person was dead.

Signs of life were detected from another person who was trapped, but it's unknown if that person is still alive, CBC reporter Lorenda Redekopp said Monday after the news conference.

"Our team is certainly not happy," said Neadles. "I'm not happy, nobody's happy that we have to stop work. But that's unfortunately the way we've had to end this situation."

Neadles said local officials will resume control of the site, which is under investigation by the Ontario Ministry of Labour.

Ministry officials will issue an order for at least part of the mall to be demolished, he added.

Local residents who gathered for the news conference wept, while some said a mine rescue team should be dispatched to the scene. Mayor Rick Hamilton said he had to depend on the expertise of the urban search and rescue team, CBC's Cheryl Krawchuk reported.

According to the Elliot Lake Standard, a group of about 50 people later gathered outside city hall to urge officials to resume the search. The local newspaper said the crowd was chanting, "Rescue missions never end, save our family and friends."

Members of the public were volunteering to go into the damaged building, CBC's Natalie Kalata said.

The number of people missing or unaccounted for has fluctuated greatly since the collapse, with some names being taken off the list and others added, police Insp. Percy Jollymore noted earlier. At some points, police said as many as 30 people were unaccounted for.

"Overnight [from Sunday] it's grown again, with people calling in, worried about people they haven't been in touch with … I caution it goes up and down," said Jollymore Monday.

In a Monday morning interview with CBC News Network, the mayor would not talk about the building's structural safety and insisted the focus was only on the rescue effort: "there certainly may be time in the future to deal with that."

In the aftermath of the collapse, many residents have said the mall has had a history of problems dating back to 2005 with roof leaks, flooding and falling tiles.

CBC Community member Nikki Lafleur posted this comment: "Pieces of the roof have been falling on shoppers for a long time. The people of Elliot Lake have been saying something like this would happen and they keep putting a Band-Aid on it," she said.

Asked about his own visits to the mall and whether he noticed any possible problems with the mall's roof, Hamilton said that while he and his family shopped there, he's "just dealing with the matter now at hand which is the actual rescue."

Crews, including a 40-member search and rescue team from Toronto, have been working around the clock to secure the collapsed building so rescue efforts could start at the mall, located 150 kilometres west of Sudbury.

The collapse happened around 2:20 p.m. ET Saturday. There are reports two cars went through the roof. Twisted debris could be seen near a set of escalators, food court tables and lottery kiosks.

Yves Berube, who runs a jewelry story in the mall, said he had just stepped out to have a cigarette when the floor collapsed, taking off the front part of his shop.

"I didn’t even get a chance to light it [and] then all of a sudden, boom, everything caved in behind me," he told CBC News.

"So I went running back in to see, and that’s when I saw this monstrous hole.… There was one lady, when I went back in, she was still sitting in her chair. There were pieces of concrete and steel girders all around her.

"I was looking up and seeing the sky where there should have been a roof.”

Rhonda Bear, the Algo Centre Mall manager, told CBC News repair and maintenance work has been done on sections of the building's roof over the last year but not in the area that collapsed.

She also said the shopping centre's owner, Toronto-based Eastwood Mall, completed an engineering and structural study of the building last month but it turned up nothing.

However, many local residents insist the building was in need of repairs, and a local newspaper, the Standard, has previously reported that the mall's owners embarked on a massive overhaul of its roof several years ago due to leaks.