'We saw everything shaking and the wooden structures started collapsing'

"What is the use of coming now? When every moment counts. These people come and disrupt our jobs to show that they are working," a frustrated fireman says after being interrupted by Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi's arrival at the disaster site. Joshi stepped off the snorkel and, predictably perhaps, announced an inquiry committee to probe the collapse.

Five hours after Poonam Chambers collapsed, there is still terrible urgency in the work of the firemen. They are using gas cutters to get through the iron beams and farther on to anybody trapped beneath. But the way the building looks -- like King Kong stomped on it -- anybody still alive inside is very lucky. Four people have so far died in the disaster.

Generators have been set up outside to power the lights on the building. It has made the work a little easier. But the structure is still unstable; excessive excavation could trigger another collapse. The policemen mill around, waiting for the chief minister to go.

The ambulances are waiting outside. Not one has its engines switched on. There's time yet.

Suddenly there is a stir. An unconscious victim -- or a dead one -- is carried out into the ambulance. The driver switches on the ignition, steps on the gas and hurtles away into the night.

The dusty firemen go back into the building, their shoes crunching on the glass beneath.

The firemen are still digging through the rubble at the ground floor entrance of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. The locals are helping them, dragging back the rubble with their bare hands.

Ratan, one of the volunteers from Sion hospital, says he and others were taking one victim to a private clinic for a CT scan.

"While the scan was on, she began bleeding from the nose... We took her to the emergency room in Mandakini hospital. By the time we reached there, her heart had stopped beating." It took prompt treatment to get her heat going.

Four people of the Essbes company are still missing.

"Sheetal has still not been found," discloses her colleague. Another employee Saira escaped with a fractured hand and bruises all over.

Raju Mane, who works with NABARD, lies in the Podar hospital, with a clean white bandage around his ankle. He was among the eight people admitted to the hospital. Two of them, Mukesh Shah and Mrs Malik have been shifted to the better-equipped KEM hospital, says Dr Sujata Adhav.

Mane said at 1445 or so, he heard a series of loud thuds from above. The whole office, including Mane, arose in fear and, after the initial confusion, headed for the door. But a sheet of glass cracked and splintered and cut his foot. Mane found his way out through the hysterical crowds and was sitting outside the building when someone escorted him to the ambulance.

Pranav Kalelkar, who also works with NABARD, says the noise they heard was more like a set of taps. "It came two times in thirty seconds." Later, people said it was falling concrete hitting their floor. The grill on the windows snapped with a loud sound and fell away. Since NABARD is in the furthest office from the stairs, there was little time to react.

"We saw everything shaking and the wooden structures started collapsing," says Kalelkar. Most people, including Mane, tried to run down.. Kalelkar and one of the senior officers got out through a window, which was shorn of glass and grill. When Kalelkar stepped out, he realised his head was injured. He quickly went to the Podar hospital and admitted himself for treatment.

Amarnath Dubey, the deputy municipal commissioner, had no real explanation for the calamity. "The building isn't old; it should have lasted another 50 to 70 years," he says. But he pointed out that the briny breeze from the sea just behind Poonam Chambers could have helped corrode the steel beams within the building.

"There are reports that the overhead tanks are leaking. That could have caused the corrosion," he says. But the BMC could take no action because Poonam Chambers, by virtue of being a commercial complex, did not come under its purview.