Death toll in the collapsed five-storey building in Lekki area of Lagos, has risen to 18 as at 9:15pm on Tuesday among them is a woman and her baby.
Rescue officials have continued to recover dead bodies since in the morning, according to Michael Akindele, General Manager, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA.
Akindele had at 4:00pm confirmed that the death toll had risen to 10 but that it has now increased to 18.
He said survivor figure has also moved to 13, noting that, the survivors have been transferred to hospitals by the Lagos State Ambulance Service, LASAMBUS while the deceased were being packed by the State Environmental Health Monitoring Unit, SEHMU to be taken to the mortuary.
Akindele said rescue operation was still on as three excavators were being used in the rescue operation as well as other search and rescue equipment.
The five-storey building collapsed in Lekki area of Lagos, in the early hours of Tuesday during the heavy rainfall will lasted for hours and many of the casualties, who are workers on the building were believed to have slept inside the uncompleted structure before it caved in.
Rescue operators include officers of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA, Lagos State Fire Services, Lagos State Ambulance Service, LASAMBUS, Rapid Response Squad, RRS, Civil Defence, National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, Navy and the Nigeria police.
Lekki Gardens Estate which owns the collapsed building in a statement said the uncompleted project was meant to house a number of apartment units, but construction work had been suspended in January 2016 over reported structural defects.
“The Management of Lekki Gardens has confirmed an unfortunate incident today, Tuesday, March 8th 2016 where a building collapsed at about 4a.m. in the morning, at one of its residential estate projects in Lekki.
“Rescue work started immediately and so far 7 people have been reported dead and others injured. The exact cause of the incident is not known at this time.
“All of our incident response procedures have been initiated, our support services have been mobilized and relevant authorities have been advised.”
However, the firm stated that investigations had commenced to ascertain the cause of the collapse.
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