Six dead as an unfinished building gives way near Nairobi, three weeks after another collapse killed eight

Six people have been killed after part of an eight-storey building under construction collapsed in Syokimau, a fast-growing suburb on Nairobi’s south-eastern edge, near the city’s railway terminus.

The building came down on Friday morning, Kenyan time (Friday afternoon AWST). A preliminary report by Nairobi City County’s emergency team said the building’s uppermost concrete slab gave way, bringing down part of the structure. The report did not say why the slab failed.

“So far we have confirmed six bodies,” said Duncan Ochieng, the police assistant inspector general in charge of disaster management. He said five people had been rushed to Imara Daima Hospital, and that all 405 workers on the site had been accounted for.

The Kenya Red Cross, which first raised the alarm, had earlier reported three people rescued and one missing. County officials said search and rescue teams were still working through the debris for at least one missing person, and firefighters and specialist urban search and rescue crews remained on site on Friday evening. The site has been closed off.

Patrick Makau, the MP for Mavoko, which takes in Syokimau, urged the rescue agencies to move quickly. “Every second counts,” he wrote on social media.

Why do so many Kenyan buildings fall down?

Friday’s collapse is not an isolated failure. On 23 October, a 12-storey building collapsed in Nairobi and killed eight people. By October, Kenya had recorded 24 building collapses in 2026, more than in any year this decade, according to Stats Kenya, a data research company.

The Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, a state research body, blames the collapses mainly on poor workmanship, substandard materials, weak supervision and faulty structural designs. The two deadly collapses in less than a month have added to calls for tougher oversight of construction sites.

Who is at risk?

Unfinished buildings are busy work sites, and Friday’s figure of 405 workers on a single block shows how many people can be inside one when something fails. Construction workers carry the first risk; the families who later move into new blocks carry the next one if weak work goes unchecked.

For readers anywhere, the numbers are a reminder of what happens when cities grow faster than their inspectors: a collapse every fortnight or so in one country this year.

VNN will update this story as more is confirmed.