Three building collapses in Kenya kill 18
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Citizen Digital, Tuko and Capital FM
In Kenya, three building collapses within less than a month have killed 18 people. The most recent, a wall collapse in Riverside, Nairobi, on Saturday 14 November, killed four people according to Citizen Digital, which describes contractors, the county and national government agencies blaming one another.
In Syokimau, near Nairobi, an eight-storey building under construction collapsed on Friday 13 November on Mombasa Road, near the terminus of the standard-gauge railway (SGR). Six workers died and five others were injured. Police say 405 people were on the site and all were found.
In Eastleigh, an 18-storey building under construction collapsed on 23 October, killing eight people, while four people were rescued alive. The search, carried out with the army, the National Youth Service and the Red Cross, ended on 6 November, with three people still missing. Twenty-three days later, no arrests have been made. Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja placed the blame on professionals, accusing them of negligence, while acknowledging that the county had granted the construction permits.
In Riverside, initial tolls listed three dead before the total was revised to four, and 11 injured people were evacuated to hospital. The wall collapsed on workers at an excavation site, and the Kenyan Red Cross deployed teams with two ambulances. Kileleshwa county assembly member Robert Alai criticised what he described as failures in county oversight and called for officials to be held accountable. The county’s disaster management office, headed by Bramwell Simiyu, says it is fulfilling its mandate and has referred the investigation to the DCI, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations. Police say they need more time to complete their investigations into the Riverside collapse.
