Living up to his name, eight-month-old Divine Emmanuel was destined to survive after a four-storey building collapsed yesterday, at 44, Ojerinde Street, Idi-Araba, Lagos.

For 12 hours, he was under the rubble of the collapsed building before he was eventually rescued. His mother, Loveth Emmanuel, was in the sitting room playing with him when the building collapsed. She was said to have shouted herself hoarse calling for help until 3 a.m., today, when workers heard her voice and rescued her and her baby.

However, Loveth’s mother, who was in the toilet at the time of the incident, was not so lucky as she was knocked out by heavy bricks. She is now lying dead at the Mushin General Hospital. Another unlucky occupant of the house was a man identified as Ego, who lost his three children to the disaster. [/b]Another occupant of the house, who sells roasted plantain in front of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, identified as Iya Oniboli, was also unlucky as she lost four of her children to the mishap.
[b]
P.M.NEWS investigations, this morning, revealed that more than four bodies were recovered from the rubble. Ten bodies have so far been recovered from the rubble of the collapsed building. Most of the occupants of the building, described as a mini barracks by neighbours because of its large number of occupants, said the majority of them were rescued yesterday, hours after the building crashed.

Investigations at the scene, this morning, revealed that some occupants of the building were still trapped in the building. Some of them were said to have phoned their neighbours and relatives to seek for help. Investigations revealed that tenants of the collapsed building had a feeling that the building could collapse any moment. One of the tenants, Kenneth Ogbegbe, who claimed to be the first tenant of the house in 2000, said there were signs all over the place that the building would collapse any time.

“If you touched the wall, it was giving way; the building was vibrating and whenever we told Alhaja (the landlady) about it, she would accuse us of destroying the house and ask us to pack out,” the distraught tenant, who was not at home when the incident happened, told P.M.NEWS. He dispelled rumours that three floors were added to the building recently. “Nothing was added to the building. That was how we met the building when we packed in there in 2000 and we were the first tenants,” he explained.

Another tenant, Chukwuemeka, said they (tenants) had noticed that the building was shaking some weeks back and had been trying to get alternative accommodation before it collapsed yesterday. He called on governor Babatunde Fashola to seize the land on which the house was built because the landlady refused to heed the advice of her tenants over the state of the building. [/b]Rescue efforts were still going on at the site of the collapsed building as at the time of filing this report.

[b]The state Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development, Mr. Francisco Abosede and Hon. Olatunde Babatunde Adepitan, Chairman, Mushin Local Government, were at the scene of the incident this morning. The commissioner urged the rescue team, which comprises the official of LASEMA, LASEPA, NEMA and the area boys, to continue the search until the last person is taken out of the rubble. In his speech, Adepitan attributed the collapse to substandard materials used in constructing the building.

He, however, stated that, after what had happened, the local government would start going round to ensure that every building being constructed in his local government would be properly monitored and supervised to ensure that substandard materials are not used. As at the time of filing this report, rescue work was still going on at the scene of the incident.


http://thepmnews.com/2009/03/25/collapsed-building-baby-survives-man-loses-3-children

[size=18pt]Death toll from Nigeria building collapse rises to 11[/size]
Wed Mar 25, 2009 2:00pm GMT
By Seun Sanni

LAGOS, March 25 (Reuters) - The death toll from the collapse of a four-storey building in Nigeria's biggest city Lagos rose to 11 on Wednesday, some of them children, a police spokesman and Reuters witnesses said.

The residential building in the densely-populated Idi-Araba neighbourhood collapsed late on Tuesday. Its concrete floors concertinaed, trapping scores of people inside and sending twisted metal and rubble onto surrounding streets.

Lagos police spokesman Frank Mba said 11 bodies had been recovered.

A four-year old was the latest victim to be pulled from the rubble, Abdusalam Muhamed from the National Emergency Management Agency told Reuters.

"We recovered the body just about an hour ago," he said.

"We are trying to remove the debris to see if we can recover any more bodies, because whoever is inside must be dead by now ,  Being trapped in the rubble of a four storey building and still surviving after 21 hours is going to be a miracle."

Residents pointed into the rubble to try to help rescue workers find relatives still trapped. The Red Cross set up a tracing centre to try to determine how many people were missing.

"My sister about 15 years old is still inside there and my two young brothers," said Amos Akpan, one of the survivors.

Construction workers from a nearby site used excavators to try to lift the concrete floors and allow rescue workers to get inside. Several ambulances stood by waiting for survivors while hundreds of local residents looked on.

Sub-standard materials and disregard for building regulations mean such collapses are not uncommon in Africa's most populous nation, where infrastructure is old and poorly maintained.

Twenty-eight people were killed in 2006 when a four-storey building collapsed in Lagos. The death toll then was high because people were using a restaurant, bar and shops on the ground floor at the time.

At least three people were killed last July when a four-storey shopping centre under construction in the capital Abuja collapsed.

(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: af.reuters.com/ ) (Additional reporting by Akintunde Akinleye and Tume Ahemba; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Source: Reuters UK