A school building collapsed during classes in the central Nigerian city of Jos on Friday, leaving at least 10 people dead, according to a hospital worker, and dozens more injured, with victims still being counted, the country’s emergency services agency said.
Footage broadcast on Nigerian television showed rescue workers and ambulances evacuating the injured, as dozens of bystanders and students sifted through the rubble of the school, called Saint Academy.
“Unfortunately, some students lost their lives, but the exact number of deaths is still being confirmed,” the National Emergency Management Agency said in a social media post on Friday evening about the school collapse, adding that 30 of the more than 40 who had been rescued remained in various nearby hospitals, with two in intensive care. It was not immediately clear whether any teachers or other adults were among the dead and injured.
Buildings collapse relatively frequently in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, primarily because of the use of low-quality building material, poor or no soil testing before construction, and lax supervision and maintenance, according to building experts. Last year, Farouk Salim, director general of the country’s public regulatory agency, acknowledged that Nigeria had the highest number of building collapses on the continent.
Dorcas Ison, a health worker at Plateau State Hospital, said that 10 people from the school in Jos had been pronounced dead at the hospital and that 10 others were receiving treatment as of Friday evening, with relatives coming in and out of the hospital to identify the victims.
The three-story school building looked as though it had been sheared in half, with one part still standing and the other, including the large corrugated iron roof, collapsed on the ground.
As of Friday evening, what caused the collapse remained unclear. But harsh weather often undermines the fragile structure of some buildings in Nigeria, experts say, and heavy rains pounded Jos over the last few days, with more thunderstorms and downpours expected in the coming week.
Eyewitnesses, and relatives and friends of the students rushed to Saint Academy, a private high school, on Friday morning, when news of the collapse emerged. One witness, Hosea Donald, 41, said that he and other bystanders had pulled out the bodies of eight students who died in the collapse, and that damaged roads were making the site hard to reach for ambulances.
More than 600 buildings have collapsed over the last 40 years, according to a report released this month by the Building Collapse Prevention Guild, an advocacy group promoting safer construction practices in Nigeria. As of July 7, 22 buildings already had collapsed this year, the guild said.
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