NAIROBI — Rescuers were on Saturday searching for seven people feared trapped after a multi-storey building under construction collapsed in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
The 16-storey building came down on Friday in the densely populated business and residential district of Eastleigh, with videos shared online showing a dramatic crash and huge clouds of dust.
Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said eleven shops on the ground floor and in the basement were occupied at the time of the collapse.
“Seven people have been reported missing,” he posted on X late on Friday.
Mr Murkomen said 66 of the 67 people working on the site had escaped unharmed, while one was injured.
Earlier, police said they had rescued one woman from the rubble and could hear the voice of another.
The building lay in a pile of rubble as search and rescue teams arrived at the scene and struggled to gain access to the site, which is jammed between other high-rise buildings.
Bibiye Mahmoud, president of the Institution of Engineering Technology of Kenya, told AFP at the scene that contractors and engineers were supposed to ensure works were carried out by professionals.
“But most are not,” she said. “This is why we are seeing these catastrophes… There is no accountability.”
Building Safety Concerns
Kenya’s National Building Inspectorate found in a report that 87 per cent of buildings audited nationwide last year failed to meet standards or lacked the required approvals.
“Our concern is to save lives,” Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja told reporters, adding: “This building has no occupation certificate… this has potentially cost lives.”
An occupation certificate is the authority’s formal sign-off that a building is safe and legally fit to be occupied.
John Ogallo, vice-president of the Institution of Engineers of Kenya, who was also at the site, said there had been warning signs.
“People here are saying distresses were observed, like cracks,” he told reporters before the collapse.
If you build with the wrong materials, “it becomes a time bomb,” he added.
Nairobi is undergoing a rapid construction boom, with high-rise buildings springing up across the city, particularly in Eastleigh, which is known for its busy market areas and as a hub for the Somali community.
The number of buildings completed annually in Nairobi rose from 20,025 in 2022 to 25,090 last year, according to the city’s statistics bureau, as East Africa’s leading business hub draws in people from rural areas and neighbouring countries.
Looting Reported
Local media reported looting immediately after the collapse, which happened around lunchtime. AFP journalists saw police use tear gas to disperse crowds gathering near the site.
There were 86 building collapses between 2009 and 2019 in Nairobi, killing an estimated 200 people, according to a report by the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis.
Corruption has allowed contractors to cut corners or bypass regulations.
Five people were killed when a six-storey building collapsed in a town on the outskirts of Nairobi in September 2022.
In April 2016, 49 people died when a six-floor apartment building crumbled in the north-east of the capital after days of heavy rain caused floods and landslides.
