Collapse of Kesarbai Building in Dongri: 499 Mumbai structures on same high-risk list as one that collapsed

With more than 40 people feared trapped in the collapse of a three-storeyed building in the Dongri area in south Mumbai on 16 July, 2019 — and 499 buildings in the city identified as similarly vulnerable — an IndiaSpend analysis of municipal data reveals that the fire- and disaster-management budget for India’s financial capital declined 38 percent over three years to 2020.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is India’s richest civic body. The decline in its disaster management and fire-brigade budget unfolded alongside a 60 percent rise in funding, over two years to 2020, to build an eight-lane, 32-kilometre coastal road along the island-city’s western seaboard, according to our analysis of municipal data from 2015-16 to 2019-20.

The inadequacy of the BMC’s fire-and-disaster response was evident in the fact that only one in three emergency calls to the fire brigade in south Mumbai received help within eight minutes — the internationally accepted standard — according to an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay study quoted in the Hindustan Times on 2 June, 2019.

NDRF teams conducted search and rescue ops after the building collapsed in Dongri. PTI

The IIT study recommended more fire stations and extra vehicles for the brigade’s fleet to better service south Mumbai, an area with 92,312 people per square kilometres, compared to 10,796 per square kilometres in New York, a city with four million fewer people than Mumbai’s 12.4 million.

The dire situation in Mumbai is mirrored nationwide, with 1,830 “structural collapses” reported in 2015, the latest year for which data are available, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Up to 59 percent or 1,080 such collapses were of “dwelling-houses/residential buildings”.

That same year, 1,885 people — or five everyday — died in “structural collapses”. Of these, 1,109 — or three every day — died in “dwelling-houses/residential buildings” collapses.

In the 2019-20 municipal budget, the BMC set aside Rs 201.4 crore or 2 percent of its capital expenditure, for the Mumbai Fire Brigade. This covers investments for new disaster management equipment, safety gear, vehicles and fire stations.

While this is an 11.5 percent increase from 2018-19, the fire brigade’s budget is still recovering from a drop of 39.7 percent and 7.5 percent over two years to 2018-19. Before that, the BMC’s budget for this head had seen a five-year peak at Rs 273.9 crore in 2016-17.

In 2017-18, the BMC included the coastal road project in its capital expenditure, allocating Rs 1,000 crore ($156 million) for the year. Thereafter, spending on the project rose by 33 percent in 2018-19 and by 6 percent in 2019-20.

The 16 July disaster came 709 days after the BMC, on 7 August, 2017, identified the Kesarbhai building that collapsed in south Mumbai’s Dongri as a “dangerous structure” that needed to be “vacated and demolished”.