Panic As Three-storey Building Under Construction Collapses In Sapele

Fear gripped residents of Sapele on Tuesday evening as a multi-million naira storey building under construction collapses along popular Ikoyo street in Sapele, Delta State.

Although no casualty was recorded, some workers on the three-storey building site sustained various degree of injuries.

One of the residents in the area said they were shocked when the building believed to be a residential building caved in, causing panic and fear of possible death.

“At about 4pm on Tuesday we heard a loud noise and when we rushed out, we observed heavy dust that covered the cloud from the direction of the collapsed building and we all rushed to that direction.

“We observed that the building which was still under construction had collapsed and luckily there were no loss of lives apart from the injuries sustained by workers at the site when the incident occurred”, the source said.

Meanwhile, a member of the Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB), Delta State Chapter, Mr. Eugene Eze, has decried the attitude of property developers and private builders in the state for not complying with the required standard practice approved by the body when embarking on a building project.

Speaking at the scene of the collapsed building on Wednesday,  Mr. Eze stated the need for developers to always engage the services of professionals to forestall the reoccurrence of incidents of building collapse.

Reacting to the incident in a telephone conversation , the Delta State Chairman, Nigerian institute of building (NIOB), Mr. Kingsley Oghoro, disclosed that the ugly incident would have been averted if the developers had listen to the earlier warning he issued during his recent visit to the site.

“I  had earlier visited the site and advised against the improper building production processes, to include; concrete works, reinforcements placing, to mention a few but obviously my advice were ignored”.

While emphasising the need for necessary steps to be taking by developers at every stage of a building construction,  he advised that a registered builder should always be engaged to manage the building production process to avoid such occurrence.

“The above underscores why the newly constituted Local Planning Authority (L.P.A) for all local government areas of Delta State must reconstitute such LPAs, to include all professionals in the built environment”, he added .