Eastleigh building collapse: Missing woman’s phone becomes reachable 8 days after disaster

With rescue operations still underway at the scene where an 18-storey building collapsed in Eastleigh, families of 16 people who are still missing are clinging on to hope that their loved ones will be found alive.

Among the families camping at the scene as the operation approaches its end is that of 22-year-old Aurelia Wanjiku whose mother, Jude Rose Wanjiru has been camping at the scene daily, hoping for good news that her daughter has been found alive.

The family’s hope of finding her alive were boosted after her phone which had remained unreachable for the eight days since the collapse of the building, suddenly became reachable on Saturday morning.

When the family called her line, the call was answered but the person on the other end did not speak, raising hope that she could still be alive but trapped beneath the rubble.

According to the family, they could hear noise in her surroundings, including what they described as the sound of excavators when they made the call, far away from the scene where the rescue operation was in progress.

“Her other line was not functioning, so we tried to reach out to her number via her second number, and when we called it was received; however, it was like she could not hear us, but we could clearly hear the noise from her surroundings,” Wanjiru said.

Wanjiru who travelled from Kangema in Murang’a after getting the news that her daughter could be among those trapped in the collapsed building unpacked the weight of the last nine days while still clinging on to hope of a joyful reunion with her daughter.

She revealed that when the dismembered body of a woman was recovered from the rubble, the family went and confirmed that the body was not that of their missing kin.

“I have been traumatised, and I am unable to eat, especially with the news that there was a woman who was found dead but with a dismembered body,” she said.

While appreciating the rescue efforts and sacrifices made by personnel at the scene, families expressed frustrations with the slow pace of the operation, noting that eight days since the collapse of the building, the hope of rescuing survivors is dwindling with each passing day.

The conveyed their wishes for a speedy operation, urging the government to deploy all resources at its disposal

Some critiqued the country’s disaster response systems, lamenting that a carefully removing rubble from a single building shouldn’t have taken more than eight days in a country with functioning systems.

With operations well into the ninth day, rescue teams at the scene exuded confidence that the rubble could be cleared on Sunday, stating that 90 percent of the work has been done.