Kenyan building collapse near Nairobi kills six people

What the report says

Six people were killed when an unfinished eight-storey building collapsed on Friday morning in Syokimau, on the outskirts of Nairobi, according to Al Jazeera’s reporting based on Reuters and local emergency information. The structure gave way near a railway terminus, and authorities said the failure occurred when the building’s upper concrete slab collapsed, bringing part of the site down.

Emergency crews continued to search the rubble for anyone still trapped. The Kenya Red Cross first said three people had been rescued and one person was missing, while later television reports said five people had been pulled out alive and taken to hospital. Officials said they had not yet confirmed how many workers were at the site when the collapse happened, so the number of possible missing people remained unclear.

The preliminary report from Nairobi City County’s emergency team did not explain why the slab failed. Al Jazeera noted that the disaster comes shortly after another deadly building collapse in Nairobi on October 23, which killed eight people, renewing public concern over construction safety and enforcement.

More broadly, building collapses have been linked in Kenya to poor workmanship, weak supervision, substandard materials and design flaws, according to the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, a state research body. The latest incident has intensified calls for stronger oversight of construction projects in and around the capital.