AN ELDERLY man has been injured after a building partly collapsed in Valencia port yesterday (Friday).
The victim, 82, was in the bar on the ground floor having a coffee when the ceiling crumbled and a huge heap of rubble from the upper floors landed on him.
Nobody was living in the apartments above the bar, so the customer was the only injured party.
He cheated death by a miracle – and by just a few centimetres - suffering a non-life threatening blow to the head and multiple cuts and bruises.
The pensioner moved out of the way just in time to avoid a concrete beam landing on him, and was rescued by the first National Police officers and firefighters who reached the scene after they were called out at around 18.45.
Paramedics had to attend to the woman who owns the bar, as she suffered a panic attack.
The façade stayed intact, despite some 25 square metres of concrete walls, pillars and chunks of ceiling coming away.
Firefighters searched through the rubble for possible victims trapped beneath it, but after an hour and a half, concluded that the only injured party was the 82-year-old man.
Photograph: Valencia's Avenida del Puerto, where the building collapsed (Wikimedia Commons)
