18-month-old girl pulled out alive 4 days after Kenya building collapse

Rescue workers pulled out a one-year-old girl from the rubble of a building in Kenya’s capital on Tuesday morning more than 72 hours after it collapsed following heavy rain, the Kenya Red Cross said. “She was rescued and was severely dehydrated. She is currently receiving medical attention at Kenyatta National Hospital,” Red Cross spokeswoman Arnolda Shiundu told Reuters, adding that the girl was rescued at about 4a.m. The death toll in the collapse of a six-storey building in Nairobi rose to 21 on Monday after four more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the residential structure that gave way during weekend storms.

In conditions of no air, dirt, no food, no water, it’s very difficult for that person to stay alive.

Red Cross official Anthony Mwangi

Kenya Red Cross said 60 people were still missing, meaning the final toll could be much higher, although it was unclear whether those sought were at home when the building buckled. The building, which was home to more than 150 families, many of them living crammed into a single room, had been earmarked for demolition after being declared structurally unsound. But an order by building authorities for the evacuation of the bloc, built only two years ago near a river, went ignored. On Saturday, President Uhuru Kenyatta called for the building’s owner to be arrested. A day later, the owner turned himself over to police.

Kenya building