Daily Times

NAIROBI: Rescue workers pulled a six-month-old baby girl out of the rubble of a building in Kenya’s capital on Tuesday and reunited her with her father, more than three days after it collapsed following days of heavy rain.

At least 23 people have so far been confirmed dead after the six-storey residential block in Nairobi’s poor Huruma district crumbled on Friday night. Police are questioning the owners after President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered them detained. “The child, who had been buried for about 80 hours, was found in a bucket wrapped in a blanket. She appeared dehydrated, and with no visible physical injuries,” the Kenya Red Cross said in a statement.

The baby, named as Dealeryn Saisi Wasike, was identified by her father after she was taken to hospital for treatment, the Red Cross said. A Red Cross official said the fate of her mother was still not clear.

The collapse of the building was the latest such disaster in a fast expanding African city that is struggling to build homes fast enough. Like many other cities in Africa, the population of Nairobi has climbed dramatically in recent years. The Kenyan capital had almost 3.5 million people in 2011, about a third bigger than a decade earlier, according to U.N. figures. Governments have struggled to provide basic infrastructure and bureaucratic processes to ensure planning rules are met.

Many Kenyans who come to the city in search of work end up in one of several slums, such as Kibera, made up of makeshift homes of wood and corrugated iron sheets. Others live in slightly better off but still poor districts, like Huruma, where concrete buildings have risen rapidly amid potholed roads and ropey power supplies.