A team of United States soldiers on Tuesday joined frantic efforts to rescue survivors from the ruins of a building in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where police said at least eight people were killed and some trapped in the rubble could still be heard nearly 18 hours after it collapsed.
The group of 17 marine and navy engineers and paramedics stationed at a US military base in Djibouti was the first of three foreign disaster-response teams expected in Nairobi to assist in search-and-rescue efforts at the site of the fallen five-storey building, officials said.
Kenyan authorities revised upwards their initial death toll of six — which had been disputed by emergency workers — to eight, while Red Cross officials maintained that more had been killed.
”A total of 92 people — including a rescuer who collapsed — have been retrieved and taken to the hospital,” said army Major General Paul Opiyo. ”Eight of those people were dead. It is very hard to get the exact figure of people who have died because others were found alive, but later died in hospital.”
National police spokesperson Jaspher Ombati said two people had been pulled alive from the debris shortly before dawn on Tuesday.
”They were not in bad shape and we rushed them to hospital,” he said, offering the same casualty toll of eight dead and 84 wounded as the military.
But Kenyan Red Cross emergency workers said they believed the death toll was at least 12 higher.
”We can tentatively say that about 20 people have so far died,” said one, as the US troops surveyed the scene of devastation in Nairobi’s central business district.
”We already have a team of 17 US military personnel here,” said Kenyan Brigadier General Emilio Tanui, who headed overnight rescue operations. ”They are essentially construction experts and paramedics.”
”Some people still trapped under the debris are still calling for help,” he told reporters at the scene. ”They are saying that all they need is to be pulled out.”
Rescuers
Rescue teams from Britain and Israel were expected within hours to augment the furious rescue work at the site where more than 200 people, mainly construction workers, were believed to be in or in the immediate vicinity of the building when it collapsed at about 2.30pm on Monday.
”They are bringing in their expertise at this delicate time when we can hear people calling for help,” Tanui said. ”Doctors have advised them to keep quiet, since they will be exhausted from speaking in an environment of limited oxygen and water.”
Rescue officials said their efforts had been hampered by a lack of heavy equipment and poor lighting as they worked through the night and hoped the foreign teams would be able to assist in clawing through the debris.
”We expect to get sniffer dogs and imaging equipment from foreign rescuers, we have been working in a trial-and-error style,” he said. ”We have had a problem of equipment. We lacked basic equipment from the start.”
Farid AbdulKadir, head of disaster operations for the Kenyan Red Cross, said early scenes at the site had been ”total chaos”, with rescue workers hampered by huge crowds of onlookers that thronged the area, perhaps after a government appeal for citizens to ”rush” to help.
”There was an emotional outburst in the city and everybody rushed to the scene to help, that is what caused the confusion,” Nairobi police chief Kingori Mwangi said. ”But we managed to control the situation.”
Survivors have said they were taken aback by the collapse, which occurred while many workers on the building were finishing their afternoon meal.
Kenyan authorities have said the disaster appeared to have been caused by sub-standard construction standards, and President Mwai Kibaki decided to cut short a visit to an African Union summit in Sudan ”to coordinate rescue efforts and console the families of those affected”, his office said.
Witnesses spoke of seeing a large crack in the building, which workers began constructing in November, before it collapsed.
Nairobi, along with other cities in Kenya and surrounding countries in East and Central Africa, was shaken by a strong earthquake last month after which there were reports of some minor structural damage in buildings. — Sapa-AFP