Ibadan building collapse victims beg to pay hospital bills - TrendyNewsReporters Ibadan building collapse victims beg to pay hospital bills - TrendyNewsReporters
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Ibadan building collapse victims beg to pay hospital bills

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Residents of Bodija Housing Estate, Ibadan, Oyo State, were jolted from their sleep after a four-storey hotel under construction collapsed early Thursday morning.

The building, according to residents and victims, came down at around 5:40am and the injured victims were the artisans sleeping in the uncompleted building. They noted that the casualties could have been more if the incident happened during the day when workers were working at the site.

Twenty-two-year-old Toheeb Busari, who is one of those brought out of the rubble, was one of the young bricklayers working at the site. They were said to have decided to sleep at the site to save cost of transport to and from their various houses to the site.

But unknown to them that danger lurked at the building which they made their temporary abode.

Busari is in pain at the Emergency Ward of the University College Hospital where he was rushed to for treatment. Though he had been stabilised as of Friday when our correspondent visited him at the hospital, his family members were distraught. A woman identified as his aunt called the attention of a nurse on duty to the blood dripping from the victim’s right leg which had yet to be put in the Plaster of Paris.

The nurse merely asked the woman, “Where are the things you were told to buy?” The woman muttered some words in frustration, sobbed and dashed out of the ward to look for money to buy the recommended items.

An official of the hospital who witnessed the development noted that the contractor was supposed to be around to offset the bills of the victims. The victims seen at the hospital were either praying silently or muttering some inaudible words.

It’s the same situation with 37-year-old Ibrahim Omotola. Both Busari and Omotola were sleeping somewhere in the building when it collapsed on them. Omotola told our correspondent that he was discharged but had to remain in the hospital because he could not raise the money to settle the bills.  Omotola has bruises on his head and on his two legs but he was able to work unaided. He was the one who took our correspondent to where Busari was.

He said, “I thank God that I am alive and that my situation is not worse than this. The doctor said I was free to go but they cannot discharge me now because I have yet to raise money to pay the hospital bills. We borrowed money to pay for some of the few things they asked us to pay for. But I cannot pay the hospital bills now and that is why I have not been discharged.

“I have not seen the contractor. I will be grateful if the government or anybody can help us. We were just looking for how to survive before this happened. Toheeb is now in pains. There is nobody to raise money to buy the needed things for him. He also needs help like the rest of us. Three of us are at the UCH and I think two other people were taken to Adeoyo.”

Commenting on the construction work on the collapsed building, Omotola said he noticed that shoddy work was done at the site.

He said, “We started plastering the hotel three weeks ago. I noticed that there were patches there. Some pillars which were originally part of the building were there to reinforce the building. But I did not know that the building could collapse.  We were sleeping when it happened and got trapped. Some people came and removed us from underneath the debris. I was the one telling the rescuers the location of others.”

The rubble of the collapsed hotel also fell on goods and parts of a club close to the scene. Authorities at the club house said they were happy that the loss was not more than what they suffered.

A commercial motorcycle rider, ThankGod Joshua, who slept in a building next to the collapsed structure, narrated how the incident happened to our correspondent. Joshua said he and others in the building where he slept heard a loud bang at around 5:40am and rushed out only to find that the hotel under construction had collapsed.

He said, “At around 5:40am, I was still sleeping in the compound with my friend when a loud noise roused us from sleep. I rushed outside together with others and saw that the building had collapsed and there were some people trapped under the rubble.  We started making efforts to bring them out. Some people also joined us and we brought four of them out. They were alive but badly injured. They were bleeding on the faces and some of them had fractures on their legs.

“A security man called the police and they came here. Fire-fighters also came and we removed those injured and put them in police van and they were taken to the UCH for treatment.”

A worker in the club, Godiya Madala, also told our correspondent that they rescued four persons who were sleeping in the uncompleted building at the time the building came down. He said the victims were some of the artisans working at the site.

Madala said, “We rushed out immediately when we heard the sound. We were afraid because we did not know what happened at the beginning. But when we got out, we saw that it was a building that collapsed and we heard that some of the victims were buried under the debris screaming for help and we moved to remove the concrete on them. We rescued four of them, all males. I am not sure that anybody is still trapped under the debris now.

 “About six months ago, the building showed signs of distress. They completed the building and were plastering it when it collapsed now.

Contacted, the South-West Zonal Coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency, Mr Saheed Akiode, told Saturday PUNCH that officials of the agency were at the scene of the incident

Ajiode said, “We were there for search and rescue operation and visited the victims at the hospitals they were taken to. We are trying to see what can be done to assist them.”

On his part, the Oyo State Coordinator, Standards Organisation of Nigeria, Adetoye Adeyinka, said contractors should always prioritise quality materials while building.

Speaking with journalists after the incident, he urged contractors them to always reach out to relevant and certified agencies for sensitisation and advice on how to go about construction of standard storey buildings.

Efforts to speak with the state Commissioner for Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Mr Segun Olayiwola, were unsuccessful. Repeated calls to his mobile were not answered and he had yet to respond to the messages sent as of the time this report was filed.

However, a civil engineer, Mr Seyi Adedipe, who spoke with our correspondent on how to prevent future occurrence said that the cause might not be linked to inferior building materials.

He said that investigation needed to be done to ascertain what caused the building to collapse.

Adedipe said, “The soil must be able to withstand heavy load before such a structure can be built on it. When you are loading it, there will be settlement and that settlement could cause the building to collapse irrespective of the quality of materials used.

“Another factor is that there must b a design before you begin to build. The design will give, among other things, the specified iron rods to be used and it will give the quality of needed concrete. It will also give the mix ratio of the concrete. At times, some people think the same mix ration is used everywhere but it is not. The design will have a specific ratio of mix concrete. If that is not done, no matter your expertise, such building is susceptible to collapse.

“The overall factor is the workmanship. If a building construction is manned by an inexperienced person who has never supervised such a project before, no matter how, he won’t have the requisite experience to know when certain things are supposed to be done.

“For example, some persons may say they want a building to be delivered within two weeks or a month. But one has to   allow a structural pad to cure for a minimum of three weeks; that is 21 days. But somebody is saying we can do it in seven days because the concrete is pure, if another structural member is put on such, then such building is bound to collapse.”

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