Forty six casual laborers escaped death narrowly after a three floors storey building they were constructing collapsed at Sunpark village in Malindi district.
The workers who had traveled from Mombasa to Malindi to lay concrete to the third floor of the building were shocked when journalists arrived at the scene of incident.
According to one of the survivors Mr. Joseph Stemi, they had already done laying concrete on one side of the three floors storey building when it started to show signs of collapsing before they ran away using the available ladders to save their lives.
“We came here in the morning from Mombasa and started working as usual but before we were done because I was the one supervising my colleagues I started seeing the concrete that had already been placed sinking then I alerted my friends and in a minute time balcony of the storey building was down,’ he asserted.
Mr. Stemi said though there was nobody who died during the incident they were all in shock as they were lucky to escape.
He said the main problem that might have led to collapse of the building is lack of supporting columns which he said are very important to any storey building.
However Malindi town clerk Stephen Mbondo said they had instructed works officers to liaise with Engineer in of the building and come up with a report which will indicate the reasons that led to collapsing of the building.
“The owner of the building has directed his Engineer who is in Mombasa to come and assess the situation as well as piling a detail report so that we can see which way to go over the building because if they did not follow the stipulated cords of building it will have to be brought down all of it,’ said Mbondo in his office.
He said many contractors constructing storey building fails to follow building cords which are of significant important.
Mbondo called on building constructors to make sure they adhere to building cords to avoid such ugly incidents which can lead to loss of lives.
“It is lucky enough that no body died but such incidents can be avoided if at all building constructors adheres to building cords,” he remarked.
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