“The building caved in on me and I was unconscious” Victim rescued from rubble of collapsed Ketu building speaks

One of the victims injured when a distressed three-storey building collapsed in Ketu, Lagos, has recounted his ordeal.

Onawole Adebayo was in the school-turned-residential building on Oduntan Street at Agboye Estate, Ketu, when it collapsed.

The building, with over 500 rooms, first caved in partially on Saturday afternoon, September 16, following hours of rainfall.

On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 17, as residents were still trying to salvage their belongings, the building collapsed again, destroying another structure inside the compound, before collapsing completely.

Two people were rescued from the rubble with injuries.

From his hospital bed, Adebayo, an artisan, told Punch that he had gone to the premises to work for a customer on the second day the building collapsed.

He said, “My customer who was an occupant in the building called me on Saturday that I should help him remove some of his appliances after the state government had ordered the people living there to evacuate the building.

“So, I went there on Sunday morning and helped him to remove his fan from the ceiling. His apartment is on the ground floor. So, I had stepped out of the room and was about to head to the gate when the building caved in on me. That was the last thing I remembered before I woke up here in the hospital. I was unconscious.”

A relative of the victim said it took about an hour before he was removed from the rubble.

The relative said, “The customer he came to work for had left the room ahead of him. It was when he did not see him come outside that he rushed back and discovered that he was trapped under the rubble.

“That was when he raised the alarm and called the attention of security operatives and other tenants who were also evacuating their belongings. It took close to an hour before he was rescued. He also lost a lot of blood in the process before he was brought to the hospital.”

The other victim had a minor injury and was discharged on Monday morning, Sept. 18.

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