November 21: On This Day in World History … briefly
After the second collapse, it was reported that only five firefighters were allowed to enter the building at a time, and that the rest were forced to wait outside because of the danger of further collapse.
2013: Latvian shopping centre collapse kills 54
On 21 November 2013 the roof of the Zolitūde shopping centre in the Zolitūde neighbourhood of Riga, Latvia, collapsed at 17:41 local time resulting in the deaths of 54 people, including three rescue workers, and injuries to another 41 people. An unknown number of people were able to leave the store on their own after the initial collapse. It was the worst disaster in Latvia since 1950, when the steamer ‘Mayakovsky’ sank in Riga, killing 147 people.
The building, which contained a Maxima supermarket and other businesses, was completed on 3 November 2011. Architectural design was by Zane Kalinka and Andris Kalinka from the local architectural firm KUBS. It was developed by Homburg Valda and built by the Re&Re company. When the building was finished, it won the Latvian Building of the Year award. Several months before its opening, a fire broke out in the market in which nobody was injured. At the time of the collapse, construction by Re&Re was taking place. The area of the shopping centre was 4 750 m2 (51 100 sq ft), and the building cost around €1.4 million. The shopping centre was located in a part of the building owned by SIA Tineo, but it was originally owned by The Homburg Group, which still owns the adjacent apartment building.
Tineo is an offshore company owned by the Maxima group, a retail chain with operations mostly in the Baltic states, which owns the ‘Maxima XX’ supermarket in the building. The company initially claimed it was a tenant of the building. The building also contained a bank, a beauty salon, a currency exchange, a newsagent’s and a pet shop. There were plans for a layer of topsoil 20 – 30 centimetres (7.9 – 11.8 in) thick on the roof; small recreational spots with benches, connected by cobblestone-paved paths, were planned for the resident of an apartment house that was part of the same complex. Before the collapse, construction of the green roof was in progress, as was construction of underground car parking in the basement, intended for residents of the building.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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