11 killed in Mumbai building collapse

In the first major building collapse witnessed in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) during the current Monsoon, at least 11 people were killed and 10 others injured, after a four-storey building caved in at Thakurli in the neighbouring Thane district on Tuesday night.A 43-year-old building “Matrukrupa”, housing 20 families, collapsed like the proverbial pack of cards, at around 10 pm on Tuesday, trapping under its debris at least 25 persons.

The rescue and relief operations, which began soon after the incident, continued till Wednesday afternoon.  The operations were hampered by the heavy rains.As many as 50 personnel from the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), assisted by the fire brigade personnel from the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC), extricated nine bodies from under the debris till 1 pm on Wednesday.

Those injured, including the ones rescued from under the debris of the collapsed structure, were rushed to the nearby Shastrinagar and AIIMS Hospitals at Dombivli.Those killed in the mishap were identified as TV Eshwaran, Usha Kushan, Parsik Zanzurika, Usha Sundaran, Vinu Fransis, Fransis Nadar, Sushila Reddy, Rohit Giri and Jamanaprasad Sharma.

Thane District Guardian Minister Ekanth Shinde, Kalyan MP Srikanth Shinde, Collector Ashwini Joshi and other top officials supervised the rescue and relief operations.Meanwhile, raising the issue in the Maharashtra legislative Council, Congress MlC Sanjay Dutt, charged that the KDMC was doing precious little to address the constant threat faced by the residents in the “dilapidated” and “unsafe”  buildings in the corporation area.

Dutt said that there were as many as 686 such “unsafe” buildings in KDMC area in which hundreds of citizens were staying in dangerous conditions. “The KDMC authorities are not doing anything except serving eviction notice on the residents in these buildings. No effort is being made to prevent loss of life. Nor is it setting up transit camps to house the people living in the unsafe and dilapidated buildings,” he said.

The Congress legislator urged the State Government to accept the local residents’ long-standing demand of implementing the  Cluster Development Scheme in KDMC area.