Seven killed as dilapidated building collapses in Santa Cruz

Seven persons including four from one family were killed and four other persons were injured after a seven-storey building collapsed on an adjacent slum settlement in Santa Cruz (East) in suburban Mumbai on Friday morning. The rescue operation is still going on. The seven-storey building ‘Shankar Lok’ located in Vakola in Santa Cruz (E) came down at around 11.30 am on Friday. Sixteen fire vehicles along with 65 personnel of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were pressed in immediately to rescue the persons trapped under the debris. Four persons from the Pardhi family were killed in the collapse and have been identified as Sundarabai (66), Rajeshri (35), Aditya (10) and Ayush (7). Three other deceased have been identified as Chandraben Patel (46), Sudha Shridharan (32) and Louis Monks (60). All the injured persons were rushed to the VN Desai municipal hospital for treatment. [caption id=“attachment_1435217” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screengrab from a video of the building collapsing.[/caption] Since the civic body had declared the building as dilapidated and dangerous in 2008, almost all families except one vacated the building as it approached the Bombay High Court against the civic body’s notice. Even as the entire building was presently occupied by two families on the ground floor, the casualties increased as it fell on an adjoining slum settlement of around 30 shanties, called the Catherine chawl. The water tank of the building fell on the shanties. “The mirror and a trophy was broken after it fell down in my room. Breaking mirror is considered as bad omen in our culture. So, I along with my wife and two children rushed out of the house thinking something bad will happen. The building collapsed as soon as we came out,” said Sanjeev Pandey, a resident of the ground floor of the building. Jessica Almeida, a resident of the Catherine chawl said that her family moved few months back to the chawl. “It was a temporary arrangement since our original residence is currently under redevelopment. I was inside with my grandmother when we heard a loud noise outside. I dragged her outside and the building fell on our chawl within seconds,” said Jessica, a class 11 student. The civic officials said that the building was constructed in 1980 with poor construction material. “It became dilapidated and dangerous within 20 years which is why we issued a notice in 2008 asking to vacate the building but they challenged in it the High Court and continued to stay in the building. It is because of them that so many innocent people living in the chawl lost their lives today,” said a senior civic official. The police has registered the accidental death reports in the incident and is further investigating the incident.