It was a weekend of agony for residents, students and parents of Saint Academy located in Busa Buji community in Jos as a classroom building collapsed trapping hundreds of students sitting for exams on Friday.
Again, less than 24 hours after and over 200 hundred kilometres away, another residential building collapsed in Kubwa a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory leaving behind it another trail of agony, albeit in a much lower scale.
The two incidents added to the worrying cases of building collapses being witnessed across the country often leaving a trail of agony to victims and their families.
In the first six months of this year, 15 of such incidents were recorded with 20 people dead and 64 injured.
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Authorities have confirmed that 22 school children were killed while 73 injured in the Jos incident while in Abuja four people, were rescued and taken to the hospital. Three of them have been discharged.
How they happened
Eyewitnesses in Jos, especially those close to the school, told Daily Trust that they heard a thundering sound of crumbling concrete, block and sand, followed by the thick dust, which filled the air.
This attracted many residents who rushed to the school to provide assistance in searching for the buried victims.
Our correspondent reports that thousands of good Samaritans from far and wide, drawn by the news of the tragedy, began to converge on the scene. They were said to have been able to rescue a number of the trapped victims before the arrival of emergency workers.
It was a scene of commotion as parents rushed to the scene to see the fate of their children. Many of them could not hold their emotions as they were seen wailing and asking the whereabouts of their children.
Some of the victims who survived the incident narrated their ordeal to Daily Trust, at Ola Hospital where they were taken for treatment.
Chibuke Obi, a student said: “We were inside the classroom with our teacher when suddenly it collapsed. We didn’t know how it happened. We started hearing noises and later the building started falling. At the beginning, some of us ducked under their desks. My head was on the table and the ruble fell on my head. We were under the collapsed building for almost an hour before they rescued us.”
Another student, Chioma Obi, also said: “Our teacher was teaching us when the building collapsed. I was not breathing at all because everywhere was blocked. The ruble covered me. It was only dust that was entering my nose. Someone just held me and luckily, I was rescued. It was the will of God that I survived. Some of us died there.”
Rumshd Amos said she stayed under the rubble for more than two hours and her parents had almost lost hope of her survival. She said: “A concrete hit my hand. I was in that position for hours before I was rescued. They had to break parts of the building before they were able to remove me. One of my classmates was on my hand but unfortunately, he did not make it.”
Some of the parents also narrated their experiences, which they said were very traumatic.
Amos Daniel, whose daughter survived the incident said: “It was a traumatic experience, especially for her because for someone to be buried under rubble for two-and-a-half hours, you know what that means. And for us, the parents, we have given up at the beginning. We cried that she was dead not until after those hours, she was then discovered. It was the miracle of God. She ended up having one of her arms affected. The experience is actually bitter”.
Chiamaka Victor, a parent of four students said: “I have four children in the school but I haven’t seen one of them yet. His name is Chidibem. I pray God helps me to see him. I want people to help pray for me to see my child. I want to see him. People should be allowed to dig the ground more, maybe they could see him.
The Abuja incident involved a two-storey building along the Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki road, in Phase 2 Site 2, Kubwa, at about 6 a.m. on Saturday.
Daily Trust gathered that the building was initially built as a hotel and later converted to a clinic, before being transformed to residential apartments about three years ago housing about 45 tenants.
Eye witnesses said the incident involved one of its wings.
Daily Trust reports that four persons were trapped in the building. Three of them were rescued by sympathisers that included the other residents of the building before the arrival of emergency services. They were rushed to the Kubwa General Hospital where they were treated with two of them already discharged.
The fourth trapped person, a lady, was rescued by the emergency officials after about five hours in the rubble. She was rushed to the Kubwa General Hospital before being referred to the National Hospital in Abuja, where she is said to be responding to the treatment.
Meanwhile, the manager of the building has been detained by the police. The facility has also been cordoned off with the police and vigilante taking vigil to ensure no resident is allowed in and to protect looters taking advantage of the situation.
Abuja building showed signs of weakness – Tenants
Some of the tenants interviewed alleged that the building indicated a sign of weakness a long time ago, and that all complaints to the facility managers regarding it were not listened to.
A tenant, Stanley Oriaku who said has spent about two years there, said they have foreseen the coming of the incident. He said it was by sheer luck that the outcome of the incident was not massive.
“In the morning of the incident, I woke up around 6 am, only to discover some cracks around four walls inside my room. I tried to open my door, but I discovered that it had got stuck and I managed to push before it opened.
I quickly went down with my wife and in the process shouting on others and asking them to quickly move out.
“Other people went further to knock people’s doors of people who appeared to be sleeping because it was still 6 am at the time. I am sure those four people that got trapped were those that went back in order to retrieve their credentials, and in the process, the incident took place, Stanley said.
He lamented that the condition of the building, which showed signs of weakness a long time ago, had been reported to the facility manager but no action was taken, he alleged. We engaged a quantity surveyor to ascertain the building condition when we noticed that the wall was crushing off and we replaced it again year after year.
Gloria Tamasuko, another tenant who spent about 11 months in the building, has described the incident as a traumatic experience. She said the ceiling in her room was always shaking during lightning or thunder. I kept complaining to the house manager until I got tired with no positive action.
“All he was doing was increasing the rate of rent from the N400,000 that I paid, to N500,000 now on the newcomers. I was planning to leave the facility once my rent expired by next year,’’ she said.
She said she was just lucky to escape being trapped in the building as she was upstairs when an alarm was raised that a section of the building was collapsing.
“Few minutes later, the alert was raised about the crack, and I quickly ran down together with other co-tenants. That was how God has made it for me to escape from the tragedy.’’
Tamasuko, who said she spent the night along with other displaced residents, at a nearby hotel building, said she is now worried about where to relocate to. “I don’t have anyone here in Abuja”.
Abdullahi Masud was one of the four people that were rushed to the hospital following the incident. He said his neighbour had earlier drawn his attention to a crack around a staircase they used to get down. “I later noticed an unfamiliar sound from several parts of the building while I was taking my bath this morning. I managed to run down naked”, he disclosed.
Owner of the building speaks
Speaking to Daily Trust on phone, the owner of the facility, Alhaji Saleh Alfa said that the information about the poor state of the facility came to him only about five days ago. He said no developer would put so much money into such a structure and carelessly watch it collapse.
“First of all, whatever happens that involves the people’s lives, people’s blood, is unfortunate, and I sympathise with the family and those that were affected.
“I got to know about the crack in the wall about five days ago. The manager in charge of the facility called me over the phone and informed me that a wall from a part of the house was cracking. Coincidentally, I was on transit on that very day over the loss of my aunt. And when I got to my destination, I put a call to a structural engineer to go and inspect the crack. Thereafter, he called and told me that he would call another expert to join him, but unfortunately before that this incident took place on Saturday morning.’’
He said as a believer, he has taken everything that happened in good faith, and that he is ready to cooperate with the authorities to carry out an integrity test on the remaining part of the structure.
He said his manager was attending to the affected tenants as well as the victims that were taking to the hospital for treatment, until when he was picked up by the police later in the day.
“I informed the police that I would be available later in the evening today (Sunday) and by tomorrow to continue with necessary things. I thank Allah that no one has lost his life in the incident, and the most important thing now is to do whatever possible to help those victims, and look for alternative accommodation, refunding, or compensating them”, said the developer.
Meanwhile, officials of the FCT Development Control have pulled down the remaining part of the building that collapsed.
The Director of the agency, TPL Muktar Galadima, told the Daily Trust that the FCT Administration has also revoked the certificate of occupancy of the plot.
Mutfwang orders integrity test on all schools’ buildings
Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State, on Friday, during a visit to the scene of the incident directed all relevant government agencies to carry out a comprehensive structural integrity test of all private and public schools in the state.
The governor said the move was aimed at determining whether the schools meet the required building standards, thereby preventing similar incidents from occurring in the future, adding though he is not an engineer, he blamed the incident on shabby jobs done on the collapsed structure, which caused the collapse. He blamed the government agency THAT gave approval for erecting the structures.
Mutfwang directed that all shabby structures (buildings) in the state should be demolished immediately, and owners of such buildings will bear the cost of the demolition, adding that all persons living along waterways should vacate.
“We cannot allow this school to function. We need to send this message to owners of private schools and indeed the public ones. The motive for profit must not overshadow the safety of lives. We will carry out structural integrity test of all school buildings to ensure that human beings can inhabit such buildings,” the governor said.
We have identified issues with the collapsed building – NBRRI
The Zonal Coordinator of the Nigerian Building Road Research Institute, North Central office, Terver Tyosar, that is currently investigating the cause of the collapse, also said though they are yet to conclude their investigation on the building, some issues that caused the collapse have already been identified.
He said: “As a research institute, we don’t rush into hasty conclusions. Our findings are based on scientific investigation. As regards this building, we came and from visual observation, we have already identified some issues. But we will not be hasty in drawing conclusions as to what led to the collapse.
“We have collected some samples of steel, concrete and the soil. We are going to subject them to laboratory analysis. We will check if it was the soil that caused the collapse. We will check the level of compliance with regulations. We will check the material to know if they pass the integrity test,” Tyosar added.
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