12 killed, 14 injured in building collapse; many feared trapped

The disaster management cell of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) received a call about the collapse at 8.40am. “We immediately rushed fire brigade personnel to the site to rescue the trapped people,” a senior MCGM official said.

The injured were admitted to the JJ Hospital and their identity is being established.

“Five patients are in critical condition and have been kept under observation in the Intensive Care Unit. They have suffered multiple injuries and fractures. Rest are currently stable,” JJ Hospital’s Dr TP Lahane said.

A police official told Reuters nine families were living in the old building, in the Dongri neighbourhood, an area of narrow streets with closely packed buildings, some nearly a century old. Some reports said it also housed a play school but the children had not arrived yet when the building collapsed.

The building, which also had six godowns on the ground floor, crumbled at around 8:30am. It’s not clear if the heavy rains that inundated Mumbai this week had weakened the building, said to be some 50 years old.

Adjacent buildings were evacuated after the collapse, officials at the site said. The narrow streets made it difficult to bring in excavators, they said.

A large mound of concrete rubble and steel rods encircled by other houses, including what appeared to be a tall building, was left after the collapse.

A 45-member team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) is carrying out the rescue operation with the help of fire brigade personnel.

Rescue workers in hard hats clambered up the mound and hammered at concrete slabs with hammers to reach underneath. Cranes and bulldozers were also deployed to scoop up the debris. Residents helped with bare hands.

At least three people were pulled out alive.

It is not known whether the building was on the list of dangerous structures under the MCGM limits. Police are yet to determine what caused the collapse on Thursday, which was again testing the city’s rescue operations after 14 people were killed by floods from heavy monsoon rains earlier in the week.

“Forty people are believed to be stuck inside and a 43-member team is conducting rescue operations,” an official for India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) told AFP.

“Our priority is to pull out at the earliest those trapped under the rubble of the dilapidated building,” said Maharashtra industries minister Subhash Desai, who is also in charge of Mumbai.

“Once the rescue work gets over, the government will conduct a probe to ascertain the factors behind the building collapse. Strict action will be taken against those found guilty,” he told reporters.

The collapse is the second in Mumbai in a little over a month. In July, 17 people were killed when a four-storey building crumbled after undergoing suspected unauthorised renovations.