Some residents of Cole Street in the Oyingbo area of Lagos State, where a two-storey building collapsed, leaving one person dead and 26 others injured, have disclosed that the occupants of the building ignored visible distress signs on the structure. The scene of the incident on Monday, I learnt this in multiple interviews with some of the residents.
Our correspondent also observed that some goods, including crates of beer and motorcycles, were destroyed by the impact of the collapse.
Emergency responders, including officials of the Lagos State Building Control Agency, Red Cross, and Lagos Neighbourhood Security Corps, were on the ground carrying out rescue operations. Speaking with the correspondent, a shop owner in the building, who identified herself as Mrs Adaeze, noted that the government had warned them to evacuate the building because it was in distress.
She stressed that her goods, worth millions of naira, were still trapped under the rubble.
Adaeze said, “I was called in the middle of the night that the building had collapsed, and I had to rush down here. When I got here, I saw that my goods, worth millions of naira, were trapped under the building. Some of them have been destroyed.
“The government had been giving us notice to leave the place because the building is distressed, but the owner has not been cooperating.”
She appealed for government support to cushion the impact of the loss she had incurred. Another resident, Habeeb Jamiu, noted that the incident followed a midnight rainfall.
He said residents were alerted by the wailing of the occupants who were calling for help from under the debris of the collapsed building.
According to Jamiu, the building had shown signs of distress, but the occupants ignored them. Jamiu narrated, “I was awake and not far from this place when some others and I who were together learnt that a building had collapsed. It was immediately after the rain stopped around 1 a.m.
“When we got here, we heard the wailing of people and began to rescue them before the emergency responders came.
