International News

NAIROBI, (APP/AFP): Torrential rainstorms in the
Kenyan capital have left at least 14 people dead, police said
Saturday, including at least seven crushed when a six-storey building collapsed, as rescue teams shifted rubble in a desperate search for survivors.
One survivour was pulled from the huge pile of debris shortly
after dawn, Kenya Red Cross said, some 10 hours after the building
collapsed Friday night and as skies cleared after a night of
ferocious storms.
“We have lost seven people after the house collapsed last
night,” Nairobi police chief Japheth Koome told AFP. “We have 121
others who have been rescued and taken to hospital.”
Kenya Red Cross, who along with police and other rescue
services continued to search the piles of crumbled concrete
rubble, said a total of 150 households had been affected.
Two neighbouring buildings in the densely-populated and
poor Huruma neighbourhood were declared unsafe on Saturday
and are being evacuated.
In other separate incidents, two people drowned when their
vehicle was swept away by storm waters in the capital’s Industrial
Area, another person died in floods, and four were killed when a
wall collapsed, Koome added.
Nairobi Deputy Governor Jonathan Mueke, who visited the
scene of the destroyed building on Saturday morning, said an
investigation would look into why the two-year old building
had collapsed.
“The building went down during the heavy rains, but we
still want to establish if all the procedures were followed when
it was constructed,” he said.
The building collapsed at around 9:30 pm (1830 GMT)
Friday following some of the heaviest downpours since the start
of the rainy season.