Survivors Pulled Alive From Collapsed Nairobi Building As Search For The Missing Goes On

Rescue teams in Nairobi searched into Saturday night for people trapped in the rubble of a multi-storey building that collapsed in the city’s Eastleigh district on Friday afternoon. The building, which was still under construction with scaffolding wrapped around it, came down on 9th Street, off First Avenue near Yusuf Haji Avenue, at about 1 p.m. on Friday, according to The Associated Press. Footage of the collapse showed the lower floor giving way before the rest of the structure crumpled, sending a plume of dust into the surrounding streets, the BBC reported.

Eleven shops on the ground floor and in the basement were occupied when the building came down, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen said. According to The Associated Press, the ground-floor tenants included an electronics shop, a butchery and a grocery store. Murkomen said 66 of the 67 construction workers on the site escaped unharmed, while one was injured and taken to hospital, where he was in stable condition, Xinhua reported. Joseph Kaula, a plasterer who had been working on the fifth floor, told The Associated Press that he was the last person to walk out, and described how the whole area filled with dust.

Murkomen said on Friday that seven people had been reported missing, believed to have been inside the shops, and that rescue teams had made contact with some of those trapped beneath the rubble. Police said a woman had already been rescued from the rubble on Friday, and that rescuers could hear the voice of another person, AFP reported.

On Saturday, Kenya Red Cross teams working with other agencies pulled a trapped man out of the debris after hours of work and took him to Kenyatta National Hospital, the Red Cross said, in a statement reported by People Daily. A second survivor, a woman, was rescued later on Saturday and taken to the same hospital by EMS Kenya, People Daily reported. The BBC reported two people rescued on Saturday, with five still missing. The Eastleigh Voice, in live coverage from the scene, counted the Saturday evening rescue as a third survivor pulled from the rubble, including the woman rescued on Friday in its tally. No deaths had been confirmed by Saturday evening. Governor Johnson Sakaja said on Friday that it was possible one or two people had died, according to The Associated Press.

Separately, the Kenya Red Cross said it had recorded 31 missing-person cases at its tracing desk by Saturday afternoon. Disaster Officer Vincent Ochieng said two people named in those reports had since been reunited with their families, and that the reports were being verified, because some of those reported missing may have left the site before the building collapsed, The Eastleigh Voice reported. The Red Cross directed families looking for relatives to the tracing desk at the site or to its toll-free line, 1199, and said it had set up a disaster operations centre to provide psychosocial support and counselling to affected families.

The search was run by a multi-agency team drawn from the National Police Service, the Kenya Defence Forces, the Kenya Red Cross and Nairobi City County emergency crews, the police said. Governor Sakaja said the teams were using sniffer dogs and thermal sensors to locate seven people feared trapped, The Eastleigh Voice reported, and rescuers drilled through the rubble to reach the basement of the building. The Daily Nation reported that responders had stopped using heavy diggers because of fears that they could cut off the air supply to those trapped, according to the BBC. Nairobi police chief Issa Mohamud warned that the collapsed structure was leaning against a neighbouring building, raising the risk of a second collapse, The Associated Press reported. On Friday, police fired tear gas to disperse people who had begun looting nearby shops, in order to clear the area for emergency responders, AFP reported.

Governor Sakaja said on Friday that the building had received county construction approval but did not have an occupation certificate, the document confirming that a building is safe and legally fit to be occupied. “Our concern is to save lives,” he told reporters. “This building has no occupation certificate … this has potentially cost lives.” On Saturday, however, Sakaja said the building had been under construction without approved plans, despite enforcement action earlier this year, The Eastleigh Voice reported. A government spokesperson said the building’s plans had been submitted to the county government but had not been approved, and raised the suspicion that documents presented to the National Construction Authority may have been forged, according to The Eastleigh Voice.

Police said on Saturday that they had launched a manhunt for the building’s owner and for the contractor responsible for the site. “Any individual or entity found culpable of negligence or of violating building regulations will face the full force of the law,” National Police Service spokesperson Muchiri Nyaga said, in a statement reported by People Daily. The government spokesperson said the registered owner of the property is deceased, and that his family had later entered into a joint venture, The Eastleigh Voice reported. The National Construction Authority said it had identified the company behind the project, along with its architect and structural engineer, though it did not say whether the site had been inspected before Friday, the BBC reported.

Reports differed on the size of the building. The BBC said it was thought to have been 16 or 18 storeys high. AFP described a 16-storey building. Several Kenyan outlets reported 18 storeys. Police chief Mohamud said more than 10 of its upper floors were still under construction when it came down, according to The Associated Press. Bibiye Mahmoud, president of the Institution of Engineering Technology of Kenya, told AFP at the scene that contractors and engineers are supposed to be supervised by qualified professionals, but most are not. “This is why we are seeing these catastrophes … There is no accountability,” she said. John Ogallo, vice-president of the Institution of Engineers of Kenya, said residents had reported cracks and other signs of distress in the structure before Friday, AFP reported.

Kenya’s National Building Inspectorate found that 87 percent of buildings audited nationwide last year failed to meet standards or lacked the required approvals, AFP reported. A national audit that sampled 14,895 buildings marked 10,791 of them, 72 percent, unsafe for occupancy, and a further 4.8 percent as very dangerous, according to the audit figures reported by Kenyan media. The cause of Friday’s collapse had not been determined by Saturday evening, and authorities had yet to establish whether the collapse had damaged neighbouring buildings, Xinhua reported. The collapse came days after another building collapsed in central Nairobi, according to The Sun.

Sources: BBC; The Associated Press; AFP; Xinhua; People Daily; The Eastleigh Voice.