The Nigeria Building and Roads Research Institute, NBRRI, an agency of the federal government, has commenced investigation into last Friday’s collapse of a three-story building located at Nweke Okuzu street, Ugbene Two, in Enugu East Local Government Area of Enugu state.
This followed directives from the Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority, ECTDA, that henceforth any building that has been left uncompleted for five years would undergo an integrity test.
Chairman of ECTDA, Dr. Josef Onoh, who disclosed this in release, said that if such uncompleted building fails the integrity test, it will be demolished and appropriate sanction placed to forestall further occurrence of building collapse.
The collapsed building, number 36 on the street, is located behind the popular Timber Market, Abakpa Nike Enugu, and the structure had six flats.
The NBRRI investigating team led by Engineer Gerald Chukwuma said that the agency was alerted about the collapsed building; hence they were dispatched from Abuja to come and take samples of the debris of the collapsed building so that tests would be conducted to find out the cause of the building collapse.
Chukwuma also said the agency would need to carry out scientific-based research on the samples, after which they would determine the probable cause of the collapse, noting, however, that from the onsite and physical investigations they saw that some of the concretes were poor, same as reinforcement bars that they suspected were inappropriate, as well as poor supervision.
He said that generally there were steps to follow in construction to avert collapses such as soil testing, design approval by the appropriate authorities, and supervision to ensure compliance to design.
The premises of collapsed three-story building which crashed into a nearby residential building has been sealed by the Enugu Capital Territory Development Authority for investigation after which it would evacuate the rubble of the building.
The owner of the affected residential house, Mr. Ndukwe Bamidele, said his family has been displaced following the crashing of the building into his house, but thanked God that no life was lost.
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