THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Unnikrishnan, was a tractor driver-cum-mechanic at Vigesnswara motors, a company that provides logistics and devices for construction site where a mishap killed him and three others on Monday. A day before the mishap, he reached the spot for the first time to help workers use concrete vibrators for concrete shuttering works. Three other deceased workers from West Bengal were here since last six months. As the duo resumed work amidst intermittent rains, part of hillock which was around 14 metres high came crashing on them, burying them.
Sudarshan, another person was standing few metres away and escaped with injuries. The workers who were near the under construction building here said that they froze for sometime without knowing how to react.“Harnad and Bhajan were relatives and they use to eat food with us. It has been four hours since they are dead and we don’t know how to inform this to their family. It will take at least four days for their family to reach here,” said a co-worker.
The trigger
An independent engineer who rushed to the spot from a nearby construction zone said that there was laxity in reinforcing the hillocks. “We generally use jacks to support such landforms. In an ideal scenario, frames are placed on hillock and pillars are kept diagonally to hold them,” he said. “Here they have directly started constructing sidewalls, which was fine if they could have finished before the beginning of the Monsoon season,” he added. There were three three-storeyed houses and a two-storeyed building on the edge of hillock that caved in. Fire force officials and police have evacuated two of them. District administration had called an expert meeting to protect the hillock from caving in further.
