A major emergency response is underway after a four-story apartment building with seven apartments collapsed on Alkminis Street in the Petralona neighborhood of central Athens.

Initial reports suggested that four people were missing. However, three of them—construction workers—were later located after relatives reached them by phone. The woman who was reported missing after the collapse has been found safe at a different location, authorities said. Search and rescue teams are continuing to comb through the rubble to determine whether anyone else may be trapped beneath the collapsed building.

“The search and rescue operation remains fully underway,” the Hellenic Fire Service said in an official announcement.

Greece’s National Center for Emergency Care announced that three ambulances, one mobile intensive care unit, and one rapid response motorcycle have been dispatched to the scene.

Strong Fire Service units and the 1st Special Disaster Response Unit (EMAK) are operating at the scene with two specially trained search-and-rescue dogs. Neighboring EMAK units have also been placed on heightened alert and will be deployed if necessary.

Also present at the scene is Deputy Chief of the Fire Service, Major General Anastasios Pappas who is coordinating the operation.

According to the agency, the on-duty Gennimatas, Sotiria, and Tzaneio hospitals have also been placed on standby to receive any victims from the incident.

Drone footage by Orange Press, shows the extent of the damage.

Upon Closer Scrutiny:

The four-story building had reportedly shown a slight lean in recent weeks, while construction work was underway on the adjacent property.

According to reports, excavation and construction work at the neighboring lot appears to have placed pressure on the foundation of the building that collapsed. That work had been underway for roughly two to three months. In the end, the older but, until recently, fully functional building gave way.

Authorities are now expected to scrutinize the work carried out on the neighboring building’s foundation, examining whether all required safety measures were followed and investigating the possibility that lapses contributed to the collapse. Five people have already been taken in for questioning, including the two property owners and the contractors who had been carrying out the work.

Structural Concerns:

The collapse cannot be attributed solely to the work on the neighboring lot, according to Kostas Spyrakos, professor of earthquake-resistant construction at the National Technical University of Athens, and Vasilis Papadopoulos, a board member of the Association of Greek Civil Engineers, who spoke to ERTnews. Everything points to the building having already had serious structural problems of its own.

Spyrakos cautioned that without a full picture of the conditions on site, no safe conclusion can yet be drawn about the precise cause of the collapse. Still, he noted that a properly constructed and properly founded building should not collapse simply because of work being carried out on a neighboring lot.

He explained that the outcome depends heavily on how the two buildings were founded and on the nature of the soil. If the two structures shared a foundation, or if one was directly affected by the other’s, then work on one building could indeed impact the other. He stressed that before any such work begins, the necessary inspections should have been carried out and all required protective measures put in place.

“I consider it certain that this building had problems of its own,” Spyrakos said, adding that if the work on the neighboring lot was not in direct contact with the foundation of the building that collapsed, the extent of the structural failure cannot be explained by that work alone, unless the building’s load-bearing structure already had serious weaknesses.