Occupants of a five-storey building in Kenya capital Nairobi had the police and a keen tenant to thank after escaping an averted tragedy. Police personels from Buruburu Police Station had on the previous night forcefully evacuated occupants from the five-storey ill-feted building that came down hours later.
The police sealed of the Building in Kenya and camped outside the building located in Kariobangi South to prevent the caretaker and tenants and from accessing it, despite insisting that they needed to salvage their property. And on Tuesday morning the building collapsed.
“A resident alerted the police at around 3pm on Monday that the Building in Kenya had cracks and that the cracks were expanding,” Nairobi County Police Commander Japhet Koome said.
Koome said immediately after receiving the signal, officers were sent to the site and, under the leadership of OCPD Geoffrey Maiyek, they succeeded in evacuating all the occupants of the flat.
“The building had been completed just a few weeks ago and so just a few units had been occupied. We had to use force because we could actually see the danger it posed” Mr Koome said.
The police then notified the Nairobi City County and National Construction Authority and who sent officers to inspect the building.
The building collapsed at around 8.45am on Tuesday. Curious onlookers who thronged the premise even got an opportunity to take pictures and videos of the event.
Residents said although they lost their property, they were happy nobody had been injured or killed.
One of the tenants, Mr Isaac Ali Adan said he came back home at 10.30 pm that night but the caretaker advised him to find an alternative place to spend the night until the following morning.
He went back to the building at around 10.30am Tuesday, only to find it had collapsed.
He said cracks stated appearing on the building about a month ago when the owner of a neighboring piece of piece of land started digging a foundation for another apartment. But the owner of the collapsed apartment covered up the cracks with plaster before tenants moved in.
