A family of five reportedly escaped death at Ohuru Isimiri, Obi Ngwa LGA in Abia State after an uncompleted three-storey building collapsed last Sunday night.
It was gathered that the survivors were rescued by Good Samaritans and police operatives from Ohuru Isimiri Division, who stood by at the site through Sunday night until the rescue was over on Monday morning.
The survivors were said to be family members of one of the workers in the ongoing building, who came to spend a night with their father on Sunday after attending a graduation party in Aba.
According to an eyewitness identified as Chinenye Ukaonu, the incident happened around 9pm on Sunday.
He said, “I really don’t know what went wrong with the building. The construction has been on for over six months now. I had crossed the building at about few minutes past 8pm last night with my torch light.
“When I came back at about 10 in the night, I saw that the building had collapsed. The people inside the building were family members of one of the workers.
“I know the carpenter who was trapped in there, but I only noticed his family were also trapped there just this early morning. As I learnt, they went for their graduation ceremony, but couldn’t return to their home due to the rain.
“So, they were there until the unfortunate incident. The good thing is that no life was lost. I have never believed in miracles until this morning. The Aba people were not actually trained to rescue trapped victims.
“But the technique they applied was that they passed through a small hole left in the collapsed building and putting ears down to hear voices of the victims; tracing the direction of the sounds were miraculous.
“I think this construction is totally faulty. Take a good look at the blocks, very sandy. Look at the remaining part of the foundation, look at the rods, in fact with my little knowledge in construction work, I can say that this building has fallen before it was constructed.”
Another construction worker working in the building, Mr. Felix Wogu, who was not inside when it collapsed, said it was the sound of the fall of building that attracted people as it was extremely loud.
“We were around the other side here and it was almost 9pm when we heard a loud sound. We rushed and made efforts to see what we can do. We started breaking things to see where to pass through.
“Luckily we heard the voice of a woman. We traced her voice and rescued her and her daughter with two of her children and the husband trapped in there until this morning when they were rushed to the hospital,” he added.
Efforts to speak with the engineer in charge of the building construction proved abortive as he was nowhere to be found.
The owner of the building was also said to have travelled out of the country before the incident happened.
