Many feared dead in Bombay building collapse
Syed Firdaus Ashraf, Suparn Verma
This morning, Poonam Chambers in the south central business district of Bombay was a busy, bustling office building. Housing, among others, the offices -- and employees -- of business concerns ranging from Akai, Cable Corporation of India, Esab India, Lan Eseda, NABARD, SRI Finance, Rajshree Films, through to Wockhardt.
At 1450 hours, the bustle and buzz of a commercial complex changed, in a twinkling, to the crash-and-rumble of a building collapse. Counterpointed by the screams of trapped, panicked people who found their world, literally, caving in on itself.
The cause of the building collapse has not been determined, yet.
Neither has the exact extent of casualties, or damage. All we know is that several score people are trapped in the ruin.
What we have, for now, are snapshots.
We catch glimpses of people on the second and fifth floors, trying to break through the glass windows and escape.
We start back at the roar of a bullhorn wielded by fire-fighting personnel, instructing those inside the building not to panic, to stay where they are, and that help will shortly be with them.
We hold our nostrils against the sudden stench of burnt wires and electric cables.
We are jostled by the vast, milling crowds. Within them are little islands of misery, characterised by loud wails and beating of breasts -- these, we realise as we move closer, are where the relatives of those trapped inside, and who have rushed to the site, are indulging in their fear and their sorrow.
We are warned by police personnel to step back, to permit the relief work to go on unhindered.
We move between the pavements outside, and the adjoining Sterling Centre which, incidentally, houses our parent concern, Rediffusion Advertising. Attempting to absorb, assimilate, understand these freeze-frames from hell.
The area around us is awash in flickering red lights and screaming sirens as ambulances, fire engines and police jeeps rush to the site. We eavesdrop as senior police personnel use their communications equipment to place all hospitals in the area on alert for casualties.
Ambulances have already carried away one corpse, and a further 16 injured. And the rescue operations are, at the time of writing this, far from complete.
It is not, we realise after a visual inspection, going to be easy. Ongoing construction has left its mark in skeletal scaffoldings, out-thrust iron bars. These have to be cut through before the rescue personnel can get closer to where the trapped survivors are.
Four floors of the seven-storeyed building have collapsed. While it is logical that those on the fourth floor would have borne the maximum impact, rescue personnel are forced to work down from the top, as any attempt to cut through straightaway to the fourth floor could probably trigger a further collapse.
"We still haven't found the bodies," says Vasant, a fireman whose eyes are lined with tension. "The collapse has been such that the floors at the bottom have quite simply been buried. Our most difficult job is to chalk out a plan to create a doorway through which we can reach the bottom of the rubble, since the top part of the building is still hanging. One wrong move, and the entire thing will collapse on our heads."
Patience is required. Patience is hard to come by, when you are prodded by the screams of those trapped within the innards of what was, earlier today, a functioning commercial complex.
It is even harder to be patient when you are out there on the streets -- waiting and watching, while your loved ones are trapped inside. Many from the crowd volunteer to help. They are turned back by the rescue personnel -- one thing they don't need is untrained people getting under foot and, possibly, causing more damage through their well-meant efforts.
Meanwhile, the metrop's top brass are also arriving in their official cars. Chief Minister Manohar Joshi is there. Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde is there. Also BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan. So also Police Commissioner R H Mendonca. Joint PC (crime) Ranjit S Sharma. Joint CP (law and order) P S Pasricha. Senior fire-fighting personnel.
Between them, they have ruled out a bomb as the probable cause of the collapse. What actually caused the 20-year-old building to cave in on itself like a badly built house of cards will only be known, we are told, after intensive investigations. "An inquiry committee will be immediately set up," Munde says.
Pending the investigations, and its result, there is no dearth of analysis and speculation -- mostly centering around the construction activities that were going on in Poonam Chambers.
But no one, not even rescue personnel who from experience are trained to analyse such disasters, are willing to say for certain. They admit that drilling and other repair and construction work can cause vibrations which can have unexpected impact on older buildings.
They will not, however, comment on whether that is what happened here.
Meanwhile, every passing minute increases the dangers -- for indications are that the remaining floors, now precariously poised, could also collapse at any time. If that happens, rescue personnel say, rescue operations could stretch into days.
Meanwhile, night approaches and brings, with it, its own problems. The electrical supply to the area has been cut off to obviate the risk of fire. However, this in turn means that the rescue workers will need to work under the ghostly lights of emergency floodlights, being rigged hastily as we watch.
Out on the pavements, we are met at every turn by panic-stricken people, oscillating between fear and hope as they await news of the people within.
"My father and mother are both inside," says young Sawant, who has rushed over from Mazgaon. "They work in Nabard Bank."
As he talks, his eyes stray to the building within which his parents are trapped, and he quickly crosses himself.
Meanwhile, a cry goes up. We investigate, and find that police have rescued a woman who had locked herself into the bank locker with four others. Firemen, cutting through the steel walls, have rescued them and ambulances rush them to the Podar Hospital.
The police have a very, very difficult job on their hands. Every time a stretcher is brought out of the doomed building, there is a rush as anxious relatives crowd around, checking to see if the person being carried out is one of their own loved ones. The police have to keep them at bay, allow the rescuers to get on with it -- but they also have to be patient, understanding. This is a grieving crowd, and force is not the answer.
Meanwhile, others are doing what they can. Owner Ramesh Shetty and the employees of Shiv Sagar, a fast food restaurant next door, are busy handing out water and biscuits to the throngs of relatives. "We serve the offices in Poonam Chambers -- right now, a lot of our vessels are trapped inside, but who can even think of such things at a time like this?" Shetty asks, returning to the work of providing what solace he can to those milling around.
"It felt like an earthquake," says Rajan Trivedi, who has survived the collapse, without quite knowing how, or why. Visibly in shock, Trivedi could only say, disjointedly, that there are people trapped within. "Four girls from our office are still missing. I think a lot of people must have been killed," he says, forcing the words out.
Behind us, we hear the sobs of a woman. We turn around, find a middle-aged lady weeping bitterly. "Relax, momma, Sheetal can take care of herself. She either came late to work today and missed the crash or she had gone out on some excuse," a young man tells his mother comfortingly, referring to his sister who works in the same building.
As an afterthought, he reaches into his pocket, brings out dark glasses and covers his eyes -- and the anxiety lurking in them -- as he puts on a brave face for his mother.
That is what we see, all round us, as we look around the scene in the descending twilight. Brave faces. Tight with tension, rimmed red with unshed tears. Waiting, breath baited, hearts thudding, for every fresh stretcher -- in the hope that the next one will be their loved one, miraculously alive.
And in front of us is the remains of a building. In the funeral atmosphere, with the sobs and cries of relatives counterpointing with the wailing sirens and clamouring bullhorns, it is easy to imagine that the building is a victim of Bombay's frantic pace. That, after 20 years of making money, day and night, for the commercial capital of India, it has finally died of overwork, of stress.
A fireman crawls out of the ruin, visibly shaken. And tells us of how, entering the basement, where Standard Chartered Bank has its office, he saw a man sitting there, in a chair. Dead.
We turn back to Poonam Chambers. Now a pile of rubble and ruin... holding god alone knows how many more as yet undiscovered tragedies...
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