According to latest information, all of the victims were construction workers, the Vaud cantonal police said on Friday afternoon.
In addition, four people were seriously injured and four others suffered moderate or minor injuries. One of the seriously injured was taken by helicopter to Geneva University Hospital. Six others had to be treated at Lausanne University Hospital.
Police spokesman Jean-Christophe Sauterel told the French news agency AFP that they were still looking for one or two further missing persons.
The accident was reported to emergency services at 9:22am on Friday. The workers were building the “Prilly Phare” in the west of Lausanne – a 19-storey wooden residential tower set to contain 96 apartments. The “Malley Lumières” shopping centre is being extended by 14 storeys on its western side for the project.
Want to read our weekly top stories? Subscribe here.
An employee in a pharmacy in the shopping center reported hearing a loud noise and seeing a huge cloud of dust. Several witnesses, including construction workers, told the Keystone-SDA news agency that a freight elevator had plunged downwards, taking the scaffolding on the north side of the building with it.
Authorities initially refused to confirm these statements or to provide any information on the cause or the exact nature of the accident. These are still unclear, they said. The public prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal investigation.
The roads around the construction site, a nearby railway line and the access roads to the surrounding buildings remained closed on Friday afternoon, as further debris threatened to fall.
Adapted from German by DeepL/dos
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
What factors should be taken into account when inheriting Swiss citizenship abroad?
Should there be a limit to the passing on of Swiss citizenship? Or is the current practice too strict and it should still be possible to register after the age of 25?
Is your place of origin, your Heimatort, important to you?
Every Swiss citizen has a Heimatort, a place of origin, but many have never visited theirs. What’s your relationship with your Heimatort? What does it mean to you?
Trump tariffs: ‘I’m a bit perplexed’, says former US ambassador to Switzerland
This content was published on
The former US ambassador to Switzerland, Edward McMullen, says he is optimistic for the Alpine country with regard to the 31% tariff on imports imposed by US President Donald Trump.
Swiss Federal Court upholds Beny Steinmetz’s bribery conviction
This content was published on
Switzerland's highest court has upheld the conviction of French-Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz for bribery of foreign public officials.
This content was published on
The Trump administration has imposed a 31% tariff on imports from Switzerland. Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter has warned against "giving in to alarmism" in an interview published on Saturday,
This content was published on
Scientists have shown that bonobos combine their calls into complex sound sequences that resemble combinations of human words.
This content was published on
US parliamentarians have threatened the UN Human Rights Council with sanctions similar to those against the International Criminal Court (ICC).
This content was published on
Thanks to abundant snowfall, lift operators benefited from increased visitor numbers, with the number of guests jumping by 12% year-on-year.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.