Forty-eight houses caved in and 11 people were injured after a land subsidence due to underground fire at coal bearing Angarpathra under Katrash police station of Baghmara block of Dhanbad district in the wee hours of Saturday.
The residents of Angrapathra are having tormenting experience after land caved in with an explosion at 3.45 am on Saturday. Houses including BCCl quarters slowly started caving in after the explosion and families residing here were saved and no untoward incidents were reported.
“No one were trapped-in under the debris but 11 persons got injured who rushed to hospital and later released after primary treatment. They have been identified as Banarasi Kumar (34), Srikant Yadav (18), Sashi Yadav (15), Anisha Kumari (10), Kajal Kumari (8), Muskan (6), Sagar (4), Birju (30), Anita Devi (35), Suresh Yadav (50) and Parakshit,” police said.
Caving in started during the wee hours when most of the peoples were asleep and they got no opportunity to save their belongings said Srikant Yadav a local resident who closed save after the incident. The land subsidence took place about 150 meters ahead from the railway where trains like Satabdi Express and Rajdhani are still running fearlessly, said Banarsi another victim.
“Family residing at Angarpathra had narrow escaped as the explosion land subsidence started slowly; one-by-one houses started to cave-in”, said Samim a victim.
On Sunday morning people found on search for their belongings in debris; they were engaged in scavenging their valuable goods till evening. However the affected people were shifted to the temporary camps organised by district administration. Few days earlier and evacuation order was served to those residents by the BCCl administration but they were not ready to leave. Even JERDA failed to evacuate them and later on Sunday land subsidence took place and hundreds were close saved, said an official on anonymity.
Notably, underground inferno are the major reason behind the land subsidence which still continued in the various localities of Dhanbad and Boakro district; not only fears for the local residents but also poses stern threat to the four lanes Grand Trunk (GT) Road, National Highways as well as Indian railway too.
Underground inferno raging since over 90 years, a stern threat for Jharia and resulted in huge loss of ‘prime coking coal’- used for manufacturing Steel; a biggest challenge for the government.
With increasing cases of land subsidence followed by casualities and gas leakage being felt by the local residents of collieries across the Dhanbad district each day, eviction and rehabilitation remains the only choice for which the residents are still not ready to leave after the eviction drive conducted by BCCl.
According to a recent report of BCCl more than 60 thousand families are to be shifted from the fire zone of Jharia and of them 7100 families who are residing in the most dangerous zone need immediate rehabilitation.