44 hrs & counting: 10th body pulled out of rubble, 250 from 5 agencies, 2 search dogs continue ops
Times of India | 20 March 2024
KOLKATA: Forty-four hours after a five-storey illegal building collapsed on an adjacent slum in Garden Reach, the search for life by 250 rescue personnel from five agencies and two sniffer dogs yielded one more body, taking the toll to 10 on Tuesday evening. At least two more are still feared trapped under the rubble.
Till Monday night, nine dead and 17 injured had been pulled out of the rubble of the building that was being constructed without any sanction in the congested area.
The body of the 10th victim, Md Jamil, was brought out around 7.30pm on Tuesday by rescue teams comprising National Disaster Response Force, Disaster Management Group, Civil Defence, fire brigade and police officials.
Jamil's family and that of Sheru Nizami, co-promoter of the under-construction building, had kept vigil at the site since the collapse and rushed towards the cordoned-off area every time an agency official emerged for a breather.
"The wait was exhausting. All we could do was sit here and pray for a miracle, but it didn't happen. Jamil's parents and sister are inconsolable. His sister fainted a couple of times and so I asked them to stay at home while I waited here," said Monirul Islam Molla, Jamil's brother-in-law.
Molla said Jamil, a tailor by profession, was a friend of Nizami and the two often chatted well into the night. On Sunday night, too, Jamil had gone to the building to have dinner with Nizami.
The wait, however, continues for Nizami's family. "I wish no brother ever has to go through an ordeal like this. I know there is no chance of him coming out alive, but I am still hoping against hope," said Akhtar.
A majority of those killed in the collapse were people of Azhar Mulla Bagan who used to visit the under-construction building at night to chat with friends. Locals claimed Nizami had thrown a small party for the group on Sunday night.
"My son was unemployed but Sheru Nizami, who had good political connections, found him a job at a local soap manufacturing unit. My son adored him and so he used to visit the building Sheru was building to chat with him and other friends," said Kayanat Begum, mother of 23-year-old Rizwan Alam, whose body was pulled out of the crash site on Monday.
For rescue personnel, who continued to work tirelessly as two more missing persons were feared trapped under the rubble, the unstable nature of the site was making the job difficult.
"Two teams comprising 50 people have been working at the spot since 3am on Monday. But work has become more difficult because the collapse site can crumble any moment," said an NDRF officer. To confirm the presence of bodies and life, the agencies have deployed search dogs and high-tech gadgets like life detector device (LDD) and victim locating cameras (VLC).
"The LDD is equipped with seismic sensors that can locate the presence of life even 25-30 metres under the rubble. We have used them but haven't found any trace of life. However, the search dogs sniffed the presence of bodies and the camera also photographed bodies. We had to slowly break through concrete chunks to pull out one of the bodies but there are more suspected to be buried under the rubble," the official said.