2 Kids Feared Dead After Wall Collapses at NC Construction Site
Authorities are looking for the bodies of a 6-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy after the they were thought to have been trapped after a supporting wall at a construction site collapsed in North Carolina.
Local reports indicate that on Sunday the two were together playing in an unfinished part of a basement of a house that was under construction when a part of the supporting wall of the basement level collapsed, trapping the children underneath.
Residents near the construction site in Lucia, which is a short distance outside of Charlotte, revealed that the children were unaware that a supporting wall might have been compromised.
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"The kids were down there playing and the walls caved in," resident Sybil Johnson told WCNC.
Emergency responders were dispatched to the construction site around 6 p.m. after the children's father called 911.
Crews worked for several hours using both mechanical digging equipment as well as shovels to locate the two children who were buried under nearly 30 feet of earth.
"They kept saying, 'They've been down there too long without air'-- that's what the kids were saying up here, and I just told them God would take care of them," Johnson explained.
Lincoln County Emergency Management spokesman Dion Burleson revealed that crews were still digging in hopes of recovering the bodies.
"This is now a recovery operation for these two children," Burleson revealed in a statement.
Burleson added that no matter how fast emergency responders where able to arrive at the scene due to the size of the collapse, it was nearly impossible to find those children in time.
"There are calls at times like this happen where we are not able to make a difference because it's outside of our realm … this is one of those cases, and it's devastating to not only to the family, but each and every one of the responders that is out here," Burleson added.
