Four-storey building collapse in Anambra

A four-storey building under construction has been collapsed at Owelle-Aja layout, Obosi in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra state.

Although no life was lost, but the building which was under finishing touches collapsed completely to the ground at the weekend at about 7am.

It was gathered that the building earlier had a foundation for two-storey building but later, the owner decided to add two extra floors to it thereby allegedly affected the foundation due to overload as the foundation could not carry the weight of a four storey building, resulting to its collapse.

Some of the residents and onlookers stated that there were cracks in the building prior to the addition of extra two floors to the building which they said might have caused the collapse of the building.

Mr. Toochukwu Nkwodi explained that the area has soft soil texture which easily washed away by the rain stressing that there is no way tall buildings would stand in the area.

“We don’t build such buildings here. What you get here is two storey building and anybody that goes beyond two storey building does not want it to stand and again the building has been under the rain and sunshine for years which weakened the building and it fell”.

The Chairman of the Landlords Association in the area, Chief Chuka Chukwudebelu said: “we suspect that it may be as a result of the use of inferior materials that caused the collapse of the building.”

“The landlord was not in a hurry in the building may be because of fund, what he does is that whenever he gets money, he will put it in the building and that is the reason why we sympathize with him”.

“No life was lost though they are supposed to bring elevator machine to remove the debris to find out if anybody was trapped there but I don’t think so because it was an uncompleted building and the workers have not come to work as at that early hour” Chukwudebelu stated.

Efforts to reach out to the owner of the building for reaction was unsuccessful as he was said not to be resident of the area

•Culled from Daily Sun