15 dead, 100 feared missing in Nigeria after collapse of high-rise building
- A 21-storey building under construction collapsed in Nigeria’s largest city
- At least six were killed with dozens more feared trapped inside the rubble
At least 15 people have died in Nigeria’s commercial capital of Lagos after the collapse of a high-rise building that was under construction.
Building collapses are frequent in Africa’s most populous country, where regulations are poorly enforced and construction materials often substandard.
State official Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu said on Tuesday that a search and rescue effort had been launched for survivors of Monday’s incident.
“Currently all responders are on the ground as search and rescue is ongoing,” Oke-Osanyintolu said.
Rescuers say they have so far managed to pull seven survivors out of the wreckage, but construction workers fear dozens of their colleagues are trapped inside.
Witnesses say up to 100 people are missing after the luxury residential structure crumbled, trapping workers under a pile of rubble.
Rescuers used excavators to sift rubble in the glare of floodlights powered by generators as heaps of shattered concrete and twisted metal engulfed the site where the building once stood, as more workers watched.
President Muhammadu Buhari has called for rescue efforts to be stepped up as emergency services, including hospitals, swing into action.
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The collapsed building was part of three towers being built by private developer Fourscore Homes, which promised in a client brochure to provide “a stress-free lifestyle, complete with a hotel flair”. The cheapest unit was selling for US$1.2 million.
Telephone calls to numbers listed for Fourscore Homes and the main building contractor did not ring through.
Wisdom John, 28, a bricklayer, said he escaped with just a few cuts because he had been on the ground floor when the building collapsed into a pile of concrete, its floors sandwiched together.
“There was more than 50 working today and the manager too,” he said, sitting in an ambulance getting treated. “We just ran out.”
Near Monday’s collapse site, soldiers kept back a crowd of onlookers watching the rescue operation.
Dozens of angry local residents and workers had gathered to help out soon after the collapse, many crying and voicing frustration over the slow pace of the rescue efforts.
In one of the worst building disasters in Nigeria, more than 100 people, mostly South Africans, died when a church guest house crumbled in Lagos in 2014.
An inquiry found the building had been built illegally and had structural flaws.
Two years later, at least 60 people were killed when a roof fell in on a church in Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom state, in the east of the country.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse
