MEXICO CITY, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in Southern Mexico City suspended construction at a partially built upscale shopping mall after a newly opened section collapsed on Thursday.
A massive glass facade near the main entrance of Artz Pedregal, a mall located by the side of the city's southern beltway, began to crack before crashing to the ground around 11:00 a.m. local time (1600 GMT), sending debris flying on to the nearby roads.
No injuries were reported due to timely evacuation right after a crack was spotted, Mayor Jose Roman Amieva told reporters at a press conference.
Scores of people were standing at a safe distance when the nearly 700 square meters of structure gave way, and social media were instantly awash with videos taken from different angles of the exact moment of the collapse.
"We heard a big noise and were immediately evacuated from the plaza," said restaurant owner Juan Ramon Hernandez. "The collapse came upon us just five minutes later."
At least two lanes were closed.
Calling it a "case of negligence," the mayor said the mall's construction permits and other authorizations should be closely reviewed, indicating more of a human cause than a natural one.
Partly in operation since March, the controversial Artz Pedregal mall had drawn the ire of neighbors worried about less open space, clogged traffic and proximity to a rain catchment basin which serves to regulate seasonal rainfall.
The risk posed by substandard building has been a longstanding issue in Mexico City, where many poorly built or designed buildings collapsed in the 1985 and 2017 earthquakes. Subsoil conditions and irrational developers' activities have made the city increasingly vulnerable to even the slightest change of the elements.
