13 more bodies recovered from collapsed govt building in Bangkok

Rescuers retrieved 13 more bodies from the debris of the collapsed State Audit Office (SAO) building in Bangkok's Chatuchak district on May 2, bringing the death toll to 74, with nine injuries and around 20 people still missing, Report informs via Bangkok Post.

The 13 bodies were discovered by rescue teams using heavy machinery in Zone D, with some additional remains and small body parts detected, totalling 41 cases in the area, Suriyachai Rawiwan, director of the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Office, said on Friday morning.

He said efforts to access Zone C have been hampered due to a height of four metres and concerns about the stability of the building structure. It is suspected that the third-floor walkway collapsed into a deeper area below, which may contain more victims.

The rescuers have expanded their machinery, aiming to reach inaccessible locations beneath the rubble, he added.

Amid investigations into the 30-storey building's elevator, which is believed to be a potential starting point for the collapse, Mr Suriyachai said the area would be secured on Friday to allow engineers from the Department of Public Works and Town & Country Planning to assess the walls and elevator shafts for evidence. The lift shafts’ walls of the 2.1-billion-baht tower are significantly thinner than those built in other, comparable buildings, according to investigators.

Search operations will remain ongoing until the debris clearing is complete, which is expected to be finished by the end of this month, said the Bangkok official.

The 30-storey SAO headquarters was the only high-rise structure to collapse in Bangkok on March 28 when an earthquake centred in Myanmar shook the Thai capital.