Australian athletes caught up in fatal Korean club balcony collapse

The awful accident happened overnight at the Coyote Ugly nightclub in South Korea’s Gwangju, with local media reporting the casualty.

Video posted from the nightclub appears to show club-goers attempting to support the ceiling while screams can be heard.

Nicholson said her daughter had to have nine stitches in her wrist and had sustained cuts to her legs, but had already been discharged from hospital and hoped to rejoin the rest of the team in Seoul for their flight back to New Zealand.

“[It was] business as usual, and then it literally collapsed beneath our feet”, he said. Hundreds of people were in the nightclub when the incident happened.

“None of the boys are hurt or injured though – so that’s good”.

He said the packed platform landed “on top of the heads of other people beneath” them.

“A few of us tried to get the people out from underneath … we couldn’t really do much”.

“Some of them were pretty dire cases”, he said.

“And everyone was fine – so pretty relieving stuff but at the same time pretty chilling”.

Captain of the New Zealand men’s side Matt Small said he and up to eight other members of his team were on the platform that collapsed.

The players did a headcount outside the building and then jumped into taxis and headed to their hotel amid a chaotic scene as ambulance and police cars descended on the scene.

“Fina deeply regrets the situation and sends its best wishes to any victims of this accident.” said a statement from the world swimming body.

A Kiwi water polo player has a suspected broken tailbone, while her teammate needed stitches after a mezzanine floor at a South Korean nightclub collapsed, killing two people.

Local media reported seven foreign nationals had been injured in the collapse, including an American polo player.

“That’s the sort of thing we do when we get into these type of situations”.

The Gwangju Fire and Safety Headquarters said two Koreans were killed and more than 10 others were injured.

All members and management of the senior men’s and women’s water polo teams are safe and accounted for, he said.

Yonhap news agency reports the collapse took place at the Coyote Ugly club in the early hours of this morning, and that a high number of foreigners were inside at the time, some of whom were injured.

They included four from the United States, two from New Zealand, and one each from the Netherlands, Italy and Brazil, Yonhap said, citing city and fire department officials.

Source – http://clicklancashire.com/2019/07/27/australian-athletes-caught-up-in-fatal-korean-club-balcony.html