At least nine persons were killed and 21 others injured when a two-storey building collapsed in the powerloom town of Bhiwandi, even as heavy rains crippled normal life in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane district. As many as 72 marooned persons, were rescued in two rain-related incidents at Thane, many low-laying areas of which lay under thick sheets of water all the day.
Fire brigade personnel rescued 60 school children who were trapped in marooned school building, where they were appearing for an examination, 12 stranded tourists were shifted by the rescuers from a flooded picnic spot to safer place.
The Mumbai-based Regional Meteorological Centre of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast heavy rainfall for Mumbai on Monday and has also asked fishermen not to venture into the Arabian Sea during the next 24 hours. “Mumbai has been receiving good rainfall since Saturday due to active monsoon conditions. We expect very heavy rainfall in the next 24 hours due to strong westerly winds and an upper air cyclonic circulation over Gujarat,” said VK Rajeev, director of weather forecasting at IMD, Mumbai.
Going by the advisory put out by Skymet Weather, a private weather service, Mumbai has received 125 mm additional rainfall during July as against the rains it had received in the same last year. “During the month of July, Mumbai has recorded 925.6 mm of rain against its monthly average of 799.7 mm gilding past its monthly rains. Just about 10 days ago, it seemed impossible to be able to even get close to its monthly rains,” the private weather advisory service stated.
With no let up in overnight rains, a heavily dilapidated two-storey ‘Kabir Shaikh-ki-building’ caved in at Bhiwandi’s Gaibi Nagar locality in Thane district at around 9.30 am, leaving nine persons dead and 21 others injured.
At the time of mishap, ten families were living in the building, which had been declared as “most dangerous” by the local civic authorities.
The injured were rushed to local Indira Gandhi Municipal Hospital and Thane Civil Hospital, where doctors attending on them said that most of the injured were “out of danger” The fire brigade and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), where were engaged in the debris clearance operation all through the day, rescued more than a dozen persons from the debris of the building.
Of the persons rescued was a seventh month old child, who was pulled out alive from under the debris by the rescuers.
The building no 1081, owned by one Meharunnisa Kadir Hasan, was a 35-year-old structure. In all, 22 families used to live in the dilapidated building till recently. The Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Corporation (BNMC) had declared as “most dangerous” structure and issued eviction notices to the residents. Of the total families, 12 families had moved out of the place following the issuance of the notices.
Talking to media persons after visiting the collapsed building, Public Works Minister Eknath Shinde, who is also theThane district Guardian Minister, said: “What has happened is unfortunate. But at the same time, let us face it, the loss of life could have been avoided had all the families moved out of the place after they received notices from the local civic body”.
“We had declared the building as most dangerous structure unfit to live in,” Bhiwandi-Nizampur civic chief E Ravindra said.
The Thane city witnessed two major marooning incidents. In first of the incident, the fire brigade personnel rescued 12 stranded tourists from a heavily flooded picnic sport located behind a housing complex on Ghodbunder road. Water rain had gushed into the picnic spot from the nearly by swollen nullah. The affected picnickers alerted disaster management cell of the Thane Municipal Corporation which rushed a team of fire brigade personnel to the spot. The rescuers used a ladder and rope to lift up the marooned picknickers.
In the second incident, the fire brigade personnel rescued as many as 60 school children – who had been trapped in a room of a marooned building where they were writing an examination.
Meanwhile, heavy rains pounded Mumbai Mumbai, its suburbs and neighbouring Thane district, inundating low-lying areas and disrupting rail and road traffic in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).
Heavy water-logging was reported from Thane’s Ghodbunder Road owing to the flooding creeks and overflowing streams.
That Ghodbundar road was badly affected could be evidenced from a tweet put out by local resident Garfield D’souza: “#Ghodbunder road looks like a collection of toy vehicles lined up and standing still - since the #mumbairains are playing with them all!”
The traffic between Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Nasik and Mumbai-Ahmedabad was affected severely because of heavy rains.
Considered “life line” of Mumbai, the services on the suburban railway network -- Western, Central (Main) and Central (Harbour) lines -- ran behind the scheduled owing to water-logging of railway tracks at many places.
The streams at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Mumbai and Tungareshwar in Thane-Palghar belt began overflowing, posing serious threat to picnickers visiting the two forest areas during weekends.
“Dear Mumbaikars', in wake of the constant heavy downpour since yesterday, we hereby alert you of flash floods in the various streams flowing from the SGNP and Tungareshwar forests. Please follow caution. Avoid streams and water courses,” the SGNP said in a Facebook post.