Residents cheered overnight as one casualty was hauled alive from
the broken masonry, others clapped on Saturday morning as the president
walked through a muddy street at the scene.
Rescue
workers search for residents feared trapped in the rubble of a
six-storey building that collapsed after days of heavy rain, in Nairobi,
Kenya April 30, 2016.
Rescue workers raced on Saturday
to save more residents from the rubble of a six-storey building in
Nairobi - including a mother and baby whose cries could be heard - after
it collapsed overnight following heavy rain. Ten people were confirmed
dead.
President Uhuru Kenyatta visited the site of Friday night's disaster and ordered the arrest of the owners.
"We are still hearing some voices from the collapsed building," Kenya National Disaster Operation Centre director Colonel Nathan Kigotho, told reporters at the scene. "We don't have the exact number of people buried in the rubble."
Ten
bodies had been recovered from the building so far and a mother and
baby could be heard beneath the rubble, Interior Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery told reporters.
After
mainly working with hands and power tools, rescue workers moved in two
excavator vehicles to assist in lifting heavy masonry. Residents in the
next building pulled out carrying their packed belongings.
Heavy
rains have led to building collapses in the past in poor
neighbhourhoods of the Kenyan capital, which residents have usually
blamed on shoddy or illegal construction.
The
building in Nairobi's poor suburb of Huruma in eastern Nairobi had 198
rooms, Kigotho said. Some residents escaped before the collapse and at
least 133 people had been rescued.
The president
told officials "to undertake an immediate survey of all the houses in
the area to find out those which are at risk of collapsing," his office
said in a statement.
Kigotho said two of the seven people known to have been killed were adults and the five others were children.
"The
biggest cause of this was that the building was next to the river. The
water most likely undermined the foundation," he said.
Police said more than 120 people had been taken to hospital.
Residents
cheered overnight as one casualty was hauled alive from the broken
masonry, others clapped on Saturday morning as the president walked
through a muddy street at the scene.
Lower floors
of the building crumpled, leaving some of the top storey still standing.
Broken bed frames, mattresses and clothes protruded from the wreckage.
"It is raining, and these houses were built without Nairobi County authorisation," Jonathan Mueke, deputy governor of Nairobi County, told privately-owned QTV station.
"I am asking residents in the area to leave. In the area where this one collapsed there are 189 houses," he said.
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