Mumbai: Three people died while nine others were injured after a four-storied building, which was an illegal structure, collapsed in Bhiwandi’s Navi Basti area on Friday.
The incident took place at around 8:30 in the morning when a majority of the families residing in the building were sound asleep.
The residents were alerted by the noise and vacated the building. More than 10 people were trapped inside the debris and were later rescued by two teams belonging to the National Disaster Response Force by evening and rushed to the nearby Indira Gandhi Smruti Hospital.
According to the rescue team, they were seriously handicapped in their operations by the lack of space. The collapsed building was located between two structures in a very congested format.
Mahesh Nalawade, deputy commandant, NDRF said, “It took time because there was no space for us. It was too congested so we couldn’t bring our machines in to remove the debris.”
It found that the nearby structures too are in a bad state. The residents claim that the Bhiwandi-Nizampur City Municipal Corporation would come to demolish the slums, but would turn a blind eye to the illegal structures in the area.
