A crane has collapsed in east London with four people believed injured, with firefighters conducting a “complex rescue operation”
London Fire Brigade tweeted that it was “working to free people trapped inside”.
“A 20-metre crane has collapsed on to a block of flats under development and into two terraced houses on Compton Close,” said assistant commissioner Graham Ellis.
“Our urban search and rescue crews are undertaking a complex rescue operation and using specialist equipment to search the properties.
“This is a multi-agency response and is likely to be a protracted incident…”
Downing Street has rejected calls for the Prime Minister to apologise after he said that “too many care homes didn’t really follow procedures” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The London fire brigade assistant commissioner Graham Ellis said: “A 20-metre crane has collapsed on to a block of flats under development and into two terraced houses on Compton Close.”
“Our urban search and rescue crews are undertaking a complex rescue operation and using specialist equipment to search the properties.”
“This is a multi-agency response and is likely to be a protracted incident. I would ask people to avoid the area.”
It is not yet clear if the trapped people have been rescued, but Police officials have said they that had received reports of four people being injured after they were called to the scene at around 2.39pm in Bow.
Motiur Rahman, a resident of Compton Close said: “The whole roof of my house is gone. It’s all twisted. I’ve had quite a shock.
“It was about two-thirty in the afternoon and I opened the window into the garden and just saw this big red thing coming down, and I ran. I thought, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I thought the world was ending.”
Bridget Teirney, a local resident in her 30s, said: “I was sitting at my computer facing out as it happened. It made a huge loud noise and a big plume of dust came up.”
According to Ms Teirney, emergency services arrived within five minutes of the incident and helped the driver climb down on a rope from the crane’s cabin, while the other man was pinned under the weight of the structure.
“It was absolutely crazy, I rushed straight out on to the street,” she said.
This comes after Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is set to announce a £2 billion “kickstart scheme” later to help create more jobs for young people in the UK.
A London ambulance service spokesperson said: “We were called at 2.42pm today to reports of an incident involving a crane collapsing near Watts Grove, Bow.
“We dispatched a number of specialist resources including an advanced paramedic, ambulance crews and our hazardous area response team, with the first of our medics arriving within three minutes.
“Currently our crews have treated four people at the scene. We treated two of these patients for head injuries and took them to hospital and we assessed the other two patients at the scene.”
