Using saws, small cranes and bare hands, rescuers yesterday cleared the crumbled concrete and twisted steel from an overpass that collapsed onto a crowded Kolkata neighborhood, killing at least 23 people and injuring more than 80.
With more than half the debris cleared by yesterday morning, 67 people had been pulled out alive, police said.
By noon, rescuers said there was little hope of finding any more survivors.
Photo: AP
“The rescue operation is in its last phase. There is no possibility of finding any person alive,” said S.S. Guleria, deputy inspector general of the Indian National Disaster Response Force.
He said workers were focused on the recovery of dead bodies and removal of the debris.
It was not clear how many people might still be missing, possibly trapped under the debris.
Photo: Reuters
Smashed yellow taxis, a crushed truck, destroyed rickshaws and the bloody legs of trapped people jutted from the fallen girders and concrete.
Building and other construction collapses are common in India, where regulations are poorly enforced and companies often use substandard materials.
The partially constructed overpass spanned nearly the width of the street and was designed to ease traffic through the densely crowded Bara Bazaar neighborhood in the capital of the east Indian state of West Bengal. The steel girders had already been fixed, and on Thursday the concrete was poured into the framework.
Within hours, as the concrete was drying, about 100m of the overpass fell, while other sections remained standing.
“I heard an explosion, a solid one,” said resident Rabindra Kumar Gupta, who had been home eating lunch when the overpass crashed down at about 12:30pm on Thursday.
“My apartment shook. The whole building shook. When I looked outside, there was a lot of smoke,” Gupta added.
Another resident, Yogesh Sharma, described a “huge crashing sound” when the overpass came down as he was been sitting at a roadside tea stand with friends.
“I left my cup of tea and ran,” Sharma said.
“I was crying at the spot,” he said.
Crowds waited anxiously near the rescue area to see if neighbors and friends had survived. The intersection had been a place where street vendors and service workers regularly plied their trades.
“There used to be a tailor who sat here on this corner. We wonder about him. A cigarettes and tobacco vendor — we knew everyone who used to stay around this crossing,” resident Pankaj Jhunjhunwala said.
“Until this rubbish is removed, we can’t say for sure where they are or how this happened,” Jhunjhunwala said.
Police said 39 of the more than 80 people taken to hospitals were still being treated yesterday morning.
With army troops and personnel from the National Disaster Response Force joining the effort, police said they expected the rescue and cleanup to be completed yesterday.
Workers in yellow hard-hats operated huge cranes, bulldozers and other equipment through the night to clear the rubble and pry apart the concrete slabs. They also used cutting torches to break up metal beams.
The operation was a “very, very challenging task,” disaster response force head O.P. Singh said.
Rescuers also used dogs and special cameras to find people who were trapped, he said.
“The area was very, very crowded. Motorized rickshaws, taxis ... there was a lot of traffic,” one witness told NDTV television.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Washington at the time of the collapse, called West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the top elected official of the state, to express grief at the tragedy and pledge federal support.
He said he was “shocked and saddened,” according to a message on his Twitter account.
“My thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives in Kolkata. May the injured recover at the earliest,” he said.
Banerjee, who has been campaigning for re-election this month, told reporters that a private builder had missed several deadlines for completing the construction.
The contract for the overpass was signed in 2007 and it was expected to be completed in two years.
Banerjee accused the previous government in West Bengal of not adhering to building regulations.
“We completed nearly 70 percent of the construction work without any mishap,” said K.P Rao, a top official of IVRCL Infrastructure company, which was building the overpass. “We have to go into the details to find out whether the collapse was due to any technical or quality issue.”
Police have sealed the Kolkata office of the Hyderabad-based construction firm involved in building the overpass. It is also investigating the firm’s officials for alleged culpable homicide, punishable with life imprisonment, and criminal breach of trust, which carries a prison sentence of up to seven years.
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