The recent collapse of a seven-storey building at Shell New Road, Bai Bureh Road in the immediate East end of Freetown has gripped the nation with panic and some are gradually developing the fear of not living in storey building. The tragic scene and number of lives lost and injury sustained makes it one of the most devastating building collapses in Freetown for many years. The seven storey building at Shell was the third to collapse within three months in 2024 alone. The first was a five storey building at SS Camp, Regent; the second was another five storey building at Congo town and now same has happened at Shell.
It is still unknown what caused the seven-story building to collapse in the early afternoon of Monday 16th September, 2024 and as lethargic and lazy our authorities are, it will take months to know the exact cause of the disaster. Bad design, lack of control and standards, cutting costs, time pressure, and negligence are some of the primary reason responsible for infrastructural failures that have consequences of massive economic costs and loss of precious lives in the construction industry in Sierra Leone.
When details are not paid attention to by those that are meant to check that all standards of quality are met, disaster is bound to happened and that was exactly what happened at Shell. Poor construction planning is a major problem in the construction industry that can lead to a range of issues including disruption and collapsing of building. When construction plans are not adequately thought out, unexpected issues can arise during and after the construction process.
I think one of the most common causes of poor construction planning is lack of communication between project stakeholders. This can include the owner of the project, architects, engineers, contractors and subcontractors. When there is a breakdown in communication, important details can be missed and statement or situations can be misinterpreted, leading to serious problems. It is hardly to see architects, engineer, contractors, subcontractors and project owners meet to discuss the nature and complexities of a building and the materials to be used. In fact the engineers in most cases don’t know the architect drawing the plans they are to interpret.
There is an unproven assertion from the court of public opinion that, the quality of some of the building materials imported to the country are substandard especially the 1inch iron rods, many are saying the iron rods imported mostly by Indian businessmen are manufactured using recycled scrap metals exported from Sierra Leone and other parts of the world. The poor regulatory framework in the construction governance of the country is another contributing factor to the collapse of buildings in Freetown. The indiscriminate construction of storey buildings in Freetown can be attributed to the poor regulatory framework and the corrupt tendencies embedded in officials at the Ministry of Lands Country Planning and the Environment. The Ministry of Lands is the government institution charged with the responsibility to issue out building permits and it is mandatory for the ministry to visits any propose building site before issuing permits to people, but they will never do that. All what is of importance to them is the size of the envelope. They are allowing people to erect tall building on dust bins, waters ways, gutters and disaster prone locations.
If Sierra Leone was a serious country, Waterloo would have been enough to decongest Freetown, but poor planning, corruption, bureaucracy and politics have destroyed its beautiful landscape and topography and it has become an eye sow. The clamour for urbanization and the quest to own property in Freetown is another reason people are sporadically and uncontrollably erecting building in disaster prone areas. It is certain that there are buildings that cannot be constructed on certain landscape because of its nature or soil profile. The land where the collapsed seven storey building at Shell was constructed was previously used as a dust bin for donkey years and it is possible the waste was not properly cleared to the standard of constructing a seven storey building on it. Our authorities prioritize money over the safety of citizens. They don’t have the energy and courage to visit proposed building sites to assess the risk involved in constructing a certain structure. All they care about is money and that has led to the death of many citizens.
Other factors that can be attributed to the collapse of storey buildings are; weak foundation, failure to perform strength test and poor quality building materials. A story building is just like a vehicle. A vehicle has a tonnage that if exceeded, it will obviously develop mechanical failures that will lead to accident. The same applies to a storey building. There are loads some storey building cannot contain as a result of the materials in their construction. Many storey building in Freetown especially in business ecosystems, are used as warehouses. It is rumoured that, two 40ft containers of cooking oil and other assorted goods were offloaded and stored in the seven storey building at Shell before it collapse. The frequent collapse of storey buildings in Freetown should warrant our authorities to have a recalibration in the governance of the construction industry. A mechanism should be put in place to monitor the quality of the building materials imported into the country and officials at the Standards Bureau should put the interest of citizens at the fore when dealing with business people trading in building materials. The government should be thinking of enacting laws that will ensure all multi-storey building contracts to be awarded to a licensed civil engineer so that they could be held accountable for any disaster resulting from poor engineering work. Most of the flooding and collapsing of building in Freetown is as a result of constructing houses in waterways.
If governments institute proper mechanism and measures for the construction of houses, the rate at which building are falling will reduce. Sincere measures must also be instituted to check the quality of building materials imported into the country. The institute of Engineers must try to put monitoring mechanisms in place to monitor the work of their members. I may be tempted to share the blame equally to the citizens building houses in disaster prone areas and the government for the collapsing of storey buildings, but I will entirely blame the government because the insatiable quest of people to own property in Freetown will lead them to construct houses on any land available to them. The onus is upon the government and the line institutions to put measures in place to stop them from doing same.