SHOCKING security footage has emerged showing the moment a mezzanine walkway collapsed under a group of visiting students at the Jakarta Stock Exchange.
At least 75 people were injured when the mezzanine floor collapsed into the lobby, police said, with victims carried out of the debris-filled building on stretchers.
Dramatic CCTV footage showed a group of some 40 visiting students on the balcony section plunge as the floor gave way with a cascade of glass, metal and other material crashing onto the ground floor where several others were walking.
A Jakarta police spokesman said the collapse was an accident and not the result of an explosion.
Dozens of ambulances were seen rushing to the site to evacuate the injured the exact number of whom is not yet known to nearby hospitals. There have been no reports of casualties so far.
Police said it was probably not a terror attack. “I can assure you this was not due to a bomb,” national police spokesman Setyo Wasisto told reporters. Police said at least 72 people were injured.
Trading resumed as usual, since the incident took place during the lunch break. Evacuation was still ongoing at the time of this writing, while the ruins of the collapsed floor were seen inside the main lobby enclosed in a police line.
A nearby road was blocked, and hundreds of employees that had been evacuated from the building were still stranded in front of an adjacent mall hours after the incident.
“The wall started shaking. At first I thought it was an earthquake, but I realized it was not because it stopped quickly,” said Lucas, who works on the 22nd floor of the twin towers. He and his colleagues rushed downstairs using the stairways and evacuated through an emergency exit.
The IDX building is one of the largest and most expensive office towers in Jakarta, located in the capital’s central business district. Among tenants are the Bank of America and Microsoft.
Security around the twin IDX towers has been ramped up since it suffered a terrorist bomb attack in 2000, which killed 10 people. Speculation has arisen as to whether flawed construction work was responsible for Monday’s incident, but police have yet to issue any statements.
“I’ve been working here for 13 years but besides the bomb attack, nothing like this has ever happened,” Lucas added. “I hope it is a construction error or something like that [rather than terrorism]. This is supposed to be one of the best buildings in Jakarta. But now I don’t know.”
Source: New York Times
