At least three yet-to-be-identified persons including a baby were trapped in a collapsed building in the Ebute Meta area of Lagos State.
The incident happened in the early hours of Friday morning, December 22, 2023.
Director of the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, Margaret Adeseye, confirmed the incident in a statement, adding that efforts were underway to rescue the victims and the baby.
According to Adeseye, the LFRSC received a distressed call around 9am on Friday about a building collapse in Herbert Macaulay Way, Ebute Meta, but when the fire service team arrived at the scene, one person was rescued while three persons were still under the debris while stating that efforts are ongoing to rescue the trapped victim.
She said, “The Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service is currently attending to an emergency which was reported at 09:00 hours to 122, Herbert Macaulay Way, Lagos Bus Stop, Ebute Meta, Lagos where a one storey building with penthouse has collapsed and two adults and a baby, all females are still trapped with search and rescue ongoing.
“However, an adult female has been rescued alive in stable condition as the State Emergency Response fully activated.”
This comes days after the mother and her nine-day-old baby on Wednesday lost their lives in a collapsed building in Ondo State.
The building collapsed when the deceased and her baby were sleeping.
Aside from the deceased and her infant, the elder brother and grandmother of the deceased were also injured in the incident.
A neighbour, who witnessed the incident, revealed that an overhead water tank newly erected inside compound crashed on the building before it collapsed and wrecked the havoc.
He added that the incident led to the death of the 30-year-old woman and her 9-day-old baby, adding that an elder brother of the baby and their grandmother also sustained varying degrees of injury.
“The building collapsed due to the water tank erected inside the compound. It was newly erected and the blocks weren’t dry enough when it was erected. It was a sad incident,” he said.
The bodies of the woman and her child were evacuated by the police and deposited at a morgue in Akure while the injured were already receiving treatment.
