Photos of Collapse at Jakarta Stock Exchange Building Show Damage and Emergency Rescue
An internal structure in the stock exchange building of Indonesia's capital Jakarta collapsed on Monday over a crowded reception area, injuring dozens of people.
Hundreds of people work in the building complex, made up of two 32-floor towers—the first completed in 1994 and the second in 1998, Bloomberg reported. The collapse occurred in Tower 2, which hosts the local offices of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and Nike as well as other firms and organizations, at 11.55 a.m. (11.55 p.m. ET), when the mezzanine floor above the lobby suddenly caved in.
A video purportedly of the moment the floor collapsed showed a group of people running as the floor fell from under their feet.
Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now
Images of the incident shared on social media after the collapse showed wires hanging from the ceiling and mangled metal structures, along with glass and concrete debris. The green lights of the building's doors and of the Starbucks Coffee were still on.
A witness who worked in the building and was in the lobby at the time of the collapse told Reuters she heard a loud noise and saw stabs of concrete falling down. "There was lots of dust. Water pipes had burst," Megha Kapoor said, adding: "I heard a loud cracking sound. I saw a lady unconscious stuck under a slab of concrete."
Ambulances rushed to the scene to treat those who were hurt, carrying people out of the building on stretchers, as police cordoned off the area. The authorities believe at least 70 people were injured, but no deaths were reported at the time of writing.
"I can definitely confirm there are no deaths," the stock exchange director Tito Sulistio told local news channel Metro TV, adding that the trading resumed as normal in the afternoon.
The causes of the collapse remain unclear, but police excluded the possibility of a bomb. The building was the target of an attack in September 2000, when a car bomb exploded inside the building's garage, killing more than 10 people, but this time Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono told Metro TV the incident was a "pure accident."