More than 300 rescue workers were on Tuesday scrambling to reach several people trapped under the rubble of a 10-storey hotel that collapsed in the seaside resort of Villa Gesell.
At least one person died when the Hotel Dubrovnik, which had been undergoing renovations, collapsed in the middle of the night.
Between seven and nine others were still missing, rescue officials said.
"The hotel imploded, it fell on itself and the last three floors tilted and crushed 25 percent of the building that was next door," said Javier Alonso, security minister for Buenos Aires Province, where Villa Gesell is situated.
He said neighbours heard something "like a creaking and a vibration in the floor and a few minutes later it collapsed."
He warned that the rescue process would be "slow" given the amount of debris but stressed that survivors were sometimes found under rubble up to a week after such collapses.
Alonso said rescue teams recovered the lifeless body of a man in his 80s and an injured woman, who was taken to hospital.
Between seven and nine people were believed to still be trapped in the rubble, said the head of the fire service operation, Hugo Piriz.
“It's a job that is done by hand because there are still people below and we can't move [the rubble] with machines,” said Píriz.
"It was like a missile fell and split the building in two," a neighbour told the the TN television channel.
A 79-year-old woman from the building next door was rescued alive with injuries after she was heard knocking on a pipe.
"We got closer to the noise and managed to hear the voice. It was hard work, it took several hours," Piriz told reporters.
More than 300 rescuers, using drones, sniffer dogs and probes with cameras and microphones, were searching for other survivors.
The Villa Gesell municipal government said that work was being carried out at the hotel "clandestinely" and that it had already been halted by the authorities in August.
The foreman and three bricklayers were detained for questioning.
At the request of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation into the collapse, experts from the Federal Police will examine the rubble to determine its cause, said Alonso.
Relatives of the victims gathered near the building to await news of their loved ones as a bulldozer removed debris.
"Time is going by and I want my son alive. I want my son alive and I want him whole," Silvana Perhauc, the mother of one of the missing people, said.
Villa Gesell is a seaside resort town of some 40,000 inhabitants located on Argentina's Atlantic coast and its main activity is tourism.
– TIMES/AFP
