Chaotic scenes broke out in Eastleigh on Wednesday afternoon when groups of youths swarmed Nairobi County lorries carrying scrap metal away from the site of the collapsed building on 9th Street.
Video footage showed young men climbing onto a moving truck loaded with twisted steel salvaged from the rubble, pulling pieces off as it drove through the area.
Scrap metal is sold to dealers by weight and recycled into manufacturing and construction, which makes debris from demolition and disaster sites a target for informal collectors.
The incident has raised questions about who is authorised to handle and dispose of material removed from the site while the rescue is still under way and investigators are trying to establish why the building came down.
Police had earlier had to disperse large crowds of onlookers to keep access routes open for emergency vehicles. Rescue work at one point paused on the day of the collapse after people trapped beneath the rubble reportedly signalled that the excavation was affecting the air reaching them.
Source: Kenyans.co.ke.
