Lagos 800 rooms collapse survivors recount ordeal

VAM News

An artisan, Onawole Adebayo, one of the injured victims in the Lagos State collapsed distressed three-storey building at Agboye Estate on Oduntan Street, Ketu, has recounted his ordeal during the incident.

VAM News reported that the school-turned-residential building in the Ketu area of Lagos partially collapsed on Sunday.

The incident saw at least two injured, and they are currently battling for life at a private hospital.

The building housing over 800 rooms with hundreds of residents first caved in on Saturday afternoon following hours of rainfall that greeted most parts of Lagos.

In an interview with PUNCH, Adebayo, while receiving treatment at the hospital, said he had gone to the premises to work for a customer when the building collapsed.

He said, “My customer who was an occupant in the building, called me on Saturday that I should help him remove some of his appliances after the state government had ordered the people living there to evacuate the building.

“So, I went there on Sunday morning and helped him to remove his fan from the ceiling.

His apartment is on the ground floor. So, I had stepped out of the room and was about to head to the gate when the building caved in on me. That was the last thing I remembered before I woke up here in the hospital. I was unconscious.”

The victim’s relative, who craved anonymity, said it took about an hour before Adebayo was removed from the rubble after the customer alerted security operatives and other tenants evacuating their belongings.

The relative said, “The customer he came to work for had left the room ahead of him. It was when he did not see him come outside that he rushed back and discovered that he was trapped under the rubble.

“That was when he raised the alarm and called the attention of security operatives and other tenants who were also evacuating their belongings. It took close to an hour before he was rescued. He also lost a lot of blood in the process before he was brought to the hospital.”