Two Survivors Pulled From Rubble of Collapsed Nairobi Tower as Police Hunt Owner and Contractor
A high-rise under construction in the Eastleigh district of Nairobi, Kenya, collapsed on the afternoon of October 23. On Saturday, October 24, rescue teams pulled two survivors from the rubble one after the other; both were taken to Kenyatta National Hospital, and the search at the site was continuing.
The collapse occurred at a building under construction on 9th Street, reported by local media to be about 18 storeys tall. Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen said all 67 construction workers at the site had been accounted for: 66 escaped unharmed and one was taken to hospital in stable condition. However, about 11 shops on the ground floor and in the basement were occupied when the building came down, and seven people were initially reported missing. Capital FM reported that rescuers had earlier made contact with people trapped beneath the debris.
The Kenya Red Cross said on Saturday that its search-and-rescue teams, working with multi-agency partners, brought a trapped man out of the rubble after hours of work and took him to hospital, and later rescued a woman. 'Our teams and partners remain on site, and the search continues,' the organisation said. Its tracing desk had received 31 missing-person reports, which were being verified; some people initially reported missing had since been traced.
Kenya's National Police Service announced on Saturday that it had launched a manhunt for the building's owner and the contractor, as investigators examine whether negligence or breaches of building regulations contributed to the collapse. 'Any individual or entity found culpable of negligence or of violating building regulations will face the full force of the law,' NPS spokesperson Muchiri Nyaga said in a statement.
The response involves the National Police Service, the Kenya Defence Forces, the Kenya Red Cross and Nairobi City County emergency crews, with excavators and sniffer dogs deployed to clear the debris. The cause of the collapse remains under investigation.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：肯尼亚首都内罗毕 Upper Hill 一带鸟瞰（资料图，非坍塌现场）。来源：Xiaotong Gao，CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / File photo: Aerial view of Nairobi's Upper Hill area in Kenya (not the collapse site). Source: Xiaotong Gao, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
