About 5
people were missing after a seven-storey building collapsed in a residential
area of Nairobi, rescue services said on Tuesday, and the city's governor
appealed to its
owner to come forward and provide architectural plans to help
rescuers.
Governor
Evans Kidero, speaking at the scene of the collapse, said at least 30,000 to
40,000 buildings constructed without approval in the Kenyan capital were at
risk.
Officials
said the building's tenants had been asked to leave on Monday after residents
reported cracks in the walls. At least 128 had heeded the call to leave.
"We are
looking for almost five people, the confirmed one is a family of four. The
husband is out but the wife and children are suspected to be inside the
building," Pius Masai, deputy director of the National Disaster Management
Unit, told Reuters at the site of Monday night's collapse.
Kenya has
seen similar tragedies in the past. A total of 49 people died in the middle of
last year when another building collapsed during a heavy, nighttime downpour in
a poor neighborhood.
The
government ordered the demolition of many other buildings after that incident.
"We
hadn't got to a point where we were going to demolish it," governor Kidero
said of the collapsed building which he confirmed had been listed for
demolition.
Residents of
the building said they had noticed cracks a week earlier and that they were
plastered over with cement by its owners, before re-emerging again on Monday
morning, prompting the call to leave.
POORER PARTS
OF CITY
The advice
to leave spared some who might have been trapped when the building came down in
the evening.
"Some
came from work late and tried to go in and collect their goods," said
Dennis Mosoti, one of the building's tenants.
Rescuers
drawn from various government departments, including the youth service, dug
through the rubble of the building with bare hands, pulling out personal items
like broken beds, mattresses and television sets, after a specialist unit from
the military cut through walls and floors at the top.
Distraught
relatives stood nearby and watched. They included David Kisia, who said he got
a call while at work on Monday night about the collapse. His wife and three
children were still missing at lunchtime on Tuesday.
"I have
told them that my family is to the back of the building, but they are insisting
on finishing one side first," Kisia complained about the rescuers'
approach.
Most of the
risky buildings are usually in the poorer sections of the city. Attempts to
deal with the problem in the past have been stymied by owners of the buildings,
who rush to court to stop demolition or other actions.
Kidero asked
magistrates and judges to consider the human cost of unsafe buildings before
issuing court orders against demolition.
"They
should not come in our way because the result is what we have seen here,"
he said.
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