The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
School building collapses with many children inside
LAGOS, NIGERIA — A three-story building collapsed in Nigeria on Wednesday with scores of school children thought to be inside, setting off frantic rescue efforts in the country’s crowded commercial capital.
A Nigerian emergency official said eight people were dead in the building and 37 people had been rescued alive.
The statement by National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ibrahim Farinloye does not say how many of the dead or rescued are children.
Witnesses said up to 100 children could have been in the school when the building collapsed.
Rescue efforts were expected to continue into the night as hundreds of anxious people watch an excavator work under floodlights.
The children were hurried through the crowd to ambulances. One man pressed his hands to a passing survivor’s head in blessing.
Rescue efforts unfolded in the densely populated neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital and a city of some 20 million people.
More equipment was brought in as nightfall approached.
More than 40 people had been found “but for now I am not in a position to give the number of dead,” Shina Tiamiyu, general manager of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, said.
It was not immediately clear why the building collapsed.
Such disasters are common in Nigeria, where new construction often goes up without regulatory oversight and floors are added to already unstable buildings.
Lagos state Gov. Akinwunmi Ambode said buildings in the neighborhood, Ita Faji, should have undergone integrity tests but landlords resisted.
Hundreds of people stood in narrow streets and on rooftops of rusted, corrugated metal, watching rescue efforts.
A yellow excavator scooped at the ruins of rebar and dust. Later it nosed at concrete slabs.
With emotions high, a number of shirtless men jumped in to offer assistance, hacksaws and mallets in hand.
Some were barefoot. Some were bare-handed. One held a water bottle in his teeth.
The collapse came as President Muhammadu Buhari, newly elected to a second term, tries to improve groaning, inefficient infrastructure in Africa’s most populous nation.