The Husaini building at Bhendi Bazar. (Source: Nirmal Harindran)
A day after a ground-plus-six-storey building came crashing down at Bhendi Bazaar in South Mumbai, the death toll rose to 33, after which search and rescue operations were called off on Friday afternoon. A total of 17 people, including six personnel from the Mumbai Fire Brigade and one from of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), were injured in the incident.
Bodies of 24 people were removed from the debris on Thursday. Nine more bodies were pulled out from under the rubble by the Mumbai Fire Brigade and the NDRF in the early hours of Friday. The last body removed from the wreckage of the 117-year-old Husaini Building at 5:35 am, was that of a woman.
Even as the Dawoodi Bohra community celebrated Bakri Eid on Friday, relatives of the deceased in the building collapse prepared for their burial at the Nariyalwadi cemetery in Mazgaon.
“We had a discussion with the BMC, Mumbai Fire Brigade and Mumbai Police and decided to call off the operations at 12.35 pm,” said Anupam Shrivastav, Commandant, 5th Battalion, NDRF.
By noon, Shrivastav said, the agencies had cleared all the rubble of the collapsed building and reached the bottom. “Even after clearing away all the rubble, we decided to look longer and later took a joint decision to call off the operation,” he added.
Shrivastav claimed that the operation was “very smooth, organised and synchronised.” The NDRF was able to reach Bhendi Bazar by 10 am after the Mumbai Traffic Police created a corridor for them along their route. “At the site, we were shown where labourers of a sweet shop were trapped so we concentrated our efforts there,” said Shrivastav, adding that within minutes of the NDRF beginning its operations on Thursday, three people were rescued alive from the debris.
As the operation neared its end on Friday, members of the Lightwala family, which included a newborn baby, were among the last to be pulled out of the wreckage. Eight members of the family were killed in the crash and the only survivor is 60-year-old Quresh Lightwala, who is admitted at Saifee Hospital and still does not know that the collapse had taken away his entire family.
According to Dr TP Lahane, dean of JJ Hospital, of the 17 injured, eight required surgery. “These were minor surgeries such as scalp suturing, surgery for rib fracture, and for limb fractures. All patients are stable now,” a doctor said. By Friday, three patients were shifted to Saifee Hospital, while eight remained admitted in JJ Hospital.
At Saifee Hospital, Juzer (28) who lost both his parents in the collapse is being treated for a fractured thigh. Another patient, Tasneem Chashmawala is critical and in intensive care unit due to head injury, blood clotting in lungs and limb fracture.
When the building collapsed on Thursday, the common wall between Husaini building and the adjacent Jumani building came down with it. Officials from the civic body said the demolition process of the building is likely to take two days. Authorities said the demolition of the adjoining Jumani building is being carried out by the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust (SBUT). “The demolition of the adjoining building is being carried out by the Trust, which is supposed to do it after we gave them permission to demolish the building last year,” said Sumit Bhange, chief officer of the Mumbai Building Repair and Reconstruction Board of MHADA.
However, Bhange put the responsibility of the building collapse on the Trust. “Since we gave them permission to demolish the building, it is the responsibility of the developer to demolish it,” he said, adding that the SBUT has been instructed to evacuate people from the dilapidated buildings and move them to a transit camp at the earliest.
Repeated attempts made to contact the SBUT yielded no response.
“Besides, the Trust has also been asked to look after the maintenance and repair of the buildings, as part of the redevelopment project. The instructions have been given to the Trust today. We have also asked them to give us the compliance report at the earliest,” Bhange added.
Atul Shah, the BJP corporator from BMC’s ward 220 said that the immediate priority would be to completely secure the site where the building once stood. “We will barricade it completely so that no one uses the empty space to dump things,” he said.
Arvind Sawant, the Shiv Sena MP for South Mumbai, visited the site on Friday afternoon. Acknowledging that there was a serious problem in South Mumbai which has lots of buildings more than a century-old, he said that residents of structures deemed unsafe should co-operate with the authorities. “It is about human lives. The (Husaini) building was old and MHADA had served the residents a notice, so people should have co-operated. The authorities should have carried out a mandatory evacuation,” he said.
The Mumbai police have registered a case of accidental death at JJ Marg police station. Manoj Kumar Sharma, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone I, said that statements of survivors of Husaini building, other eyewitnesses, local residents and civic officials would be recorded before deciding whom to register an FIR against.
