A 6-month-old baby girl has been rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building in Nairobi, Kenya, after surviving by herself for almost 80 hours.
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Red Cross spokeswoman, Arnolda Shiundu, said the rescued baby was severely dehydrated.
Nairobi’s police chief Japheth Koome said two women and a man were rescued late Thursday after a woman eight months pregnant was rescued earlier in the day.
“Three more bodies were recovered last night”.
“The rescue operation is being done by professionals and we will make sure that we get anyone who is alive out”, Koome said.
Delarine Saisi was found at about 4 a.m. local time “in a bucket wrapped in a blanket”, the Kenya Red Cross said.
Pius Masai of Kenya’s National Disaster Operation Centre said the rescued woman was conscious and talking when she was found. The Interior Ministry said that although the building had been earmarked for demolition, local authorities had failed to act on the order.
“She must have been fairly dried when she was found”.
Kenya Red Cross Society said more than 70 people were still unaccounted for amid reports more people were still trapped under the wreckage of the building.
The April 29 collapse in Nairobi’s low-income Huruma neighborhood that killed 36 people and injured more than 130 came amid Kenya’s April-May rainy season.
Meanwhile, officials have put the death toll so far at 21.
The father of the baby, Ralson Wasike, was reunited with the child by the Red Cross in Huruma through a tracking service set up at the site of the collapsed building.
Odhiambo said the infant was discovered by a military search and rescue team using specialized equipment that detected breathing beneath the rubble.
“She only cried when she was rescued from the debris”, Masai said. According to CBS News, the building was initially believed to be six stories, but later it was discovered that its ground and first floors had sunk after heavy rains. Several other buildings in Nairobi have collapsed in recent years, but without such a high death toll.
Officials ordered the building’s owner to turn himself in to police for questioning, AP reported.
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The National Construction Authority found in an audit a year ago that more than half of the buildings in Nairobi were unfit for habitation.
