Three men said to be bricklayers lost their lives yesterday in Awka, the Anambra State capital, when a two-storey building under construction collapsed at about 11am, trapping 12 of the builders, including the site engineer.
Nine of the trapped workers were however rescued by a combined team of members of the State Emergency Management Agency(SEMA), Red Cross, Civil Defense Corps and other well meaning individuals who rushed to the site.
LEADERSHIP gathered that the workers, who had assembled at the site unusually early as a result of the employment of a new site engineer, had already started work when all of a sudden the massive building came crashing down on them without any warning.
One of the workers, who identified himself as Solomon Okeh, told our reporter that he had just left the building to pick up a work tool when the building collapsed on his co-workers, prompting him to run to the main road to call for help.
Of the 12 workers who were trapped in the rumbles, 11 were bricklayers, one of whom is said to be deaf and dumb, while the twelfth is the site engineer who had just started work that same day following the disengagement of the previous one for unknown reason by the owner of the building.
Through the help of rescue workers, about seven of the trapped workers were rescued and taken to the hospital, while one of them was already dead. At the time of filing this report, four of the workers were still trapped in the building.
Another victim who simply identified himself as Solomon, who was rescued after two and half hours of staying under the rumble, told sympathizers that he heard two of his friends trapped in the same section of the house with him crying for help.
Solomon who disclosed that he was praying all the while he was in the rumbles, and was rescued without a scratch, surprisingly opted to go into the rumbles to rescue his friends, whose direction he said he knew.