Rescue workers were digging overnight through the rubble of a five-story building that collapsed yesterday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. One news account put the number of dead at 11, while another says seven were killed and dozens injured.
Njoroge Kinuthia is sub-editor of the on-line edition of the Nation Newspaper of Kenya. From Nairobi, he told Voice of America reporter James Butty that rescue operations were continuing late into the night and that the government of Kenya has said rescue teams from the United States, Britain, and Israel were on their way to help in the operation.
Kinuthia said, “Going by the number of casualties in the hospital, we could expect that the number (of dead) could go up. Still, we suspect that there are people still trapped in the collapsed building. So definitely there’s the possibility that the number will go up.”
Kinuthia says the accident was waiting to happen: “In fact one architect with the Central Bank of Kenya wrote a letter to the Nation Newspaper complaining that the building was poorly done and that it was bound to collapse any time.”
