Shaden Shehab examines Cairo's latest tragedy Negligence and corruption look to once again be the culprits behind a multi- storey residential building's collapse. Fourteen people -- four policemen, eight firefighters and two civilians -- were killed, and 33 others injured after an 11-storey building collapsed in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City on Monday. At about 8pm, a fire started in the ground floor appliance store Souq Al-Arabia on 35 Abbas El- Akkad Street in Nasr City. As firefighters rushed to the scene to extinguish the blaze, police officers were also dispatched to evacuate the building before the fire rose to higher floors. An hour later, however, a completely different scenario emerged -- the building collapsed, and the rescuers became the victims. The 11-storey building collapsed like a house of cards, its height instantly reduced to that of a two or three storey structure. Amazingly, the satellite dishes on the building's roof had remained intact, standing like sentinels over the rubble that the rest of the building had been reduced to. The tenants' belongings were scattered everywhere, the books, slippers and toys providing poignant reminders to the gathering crowd that families had lost their homes and belongings. More importantly, many were saying, they had escaped with their lives. All of the building's residents had been evacuated after the fire began; only rescue personnel, and two employees from one of the building's stores, remained inside. By 10pm, hundreds of people had arrived to gawk at the tragic scene. Policemen had blocked nearby streets, and traffic had come to a halt. Tens of Central Security Forces had cordoned off the area; the crowd stood just a few metres away while residents of nearby buildings watched from the balconies. Abbas El-Akkad, the street the building was on, is a major residential and shopping thoroughfare. Popular koshari restaurant Al-Tahrir had occupied a store on the building's ground floor. Rescue workers used bulldozers and cranes to clear the rubble in a desperate search for survivors. When a firefighter was found alive in the early hours of Tuesday, a cheer went through the crowd. "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great), some chanted. But the hope of finding other survivors soon dimmed. As night turned to dawn, rescue workers brought out the bodies of nine men -- eight firefighters and police officers, as well as one of the appliance store employees. The remaining bodies -- firefighters and another employee -- were found on Tuesday. Just after the building's collapse, Health Minister Mohamed Awad Tageddin said most of the 33 people who were injured would soon be leaving the hospital. On Tuesday, police evacuated two adjacent buildings whose structures had been potentially affected by the collapse. Serious questions had also emerged as to whether the building had only collapsed as a result of the blaze, or whether it had a shaky foundation to begin with. Cairo Governor Abdel-Rehim Shehata, who arrived shortly after the collapse, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "the blaze had probably caused the collapse, but investigations will reveal the truth." He said, "it was good news that the building was evacuated before it collapsed." Residents of nearby buildings claimed to have heard a loud sound, something like an explosion, before the building collapsed. No interpretation for the sound has yet appeared. Built in 1981, the building was licensed for just five floors and a mezzanine. In 1992, however, the owner, Abul-Ruy Hussein, illegally added six additional floors. Residents' complaints to the district's housing administration office resulted in a demolition order that was never executed. A week ago, the residents complained again. This time, it was to report renovations going on in the appliance store, which the residents claimed could harm the building's foundations Ironically, on the very day of the tragedy, a housing expert actually visited the building to inspect its foundations. His report assured that everything was all right. A district administration official told the Weekly that she had constantly warned her colleagues and superiors that the renovations were illegal and had to be stopped. However, she said, "some took money to keep quiet, and the people paid the price." As Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahed began investigating the building's licence violations and other possible causes for the collapse, many of Nasr City's residential units stood as testimony to other potential disasters waiting to happen. A great many of the district's buildings rise higher than six-storeys, a blatant violation of local zoning rules that only seems to come to the surface when tragedy strikes.
