The debris fell over a house on the ground floor of the adjacent Fulwanti Apartment. A woman was caught inside as the debris blocked the door. (Representational Image)The compound wall of a three-storey building at Savarkar Chowk in Dhankawadi Gaothan, Pune, collapsed in the early hours of Friday.
The debris fell over a house on the ground floor of the adjacent Fulwanti Apartment. A woman was caught inside as the debris blocked the door. The Pune Fire Brigade team rescued the woman by cutting the window grills of her house.
The woman, Shaila Pasalkar, 42, has been living in the ground floor flat of the Fulwanti Apartment for the last 20 years.
Her son Lokesh Pasalkar said, “The compound wall was weak and some part of it fell at around 5.15 am. On hearing the noise, I rushed out of the house and shifted two vehicles at the spot. Meanwhile, my father had also moved out of the house. The remaining part of the wall also collapsed and the debris fell on the door of our house. My mother got locked inside. Firemen cut the window grills of our house and rescued her. We have shifted to a relative’s place.”
Fireman Sanjivan Dhawale said: “We have asked the residents in the building, which is about 30 years old, to shift to somewhere else as prevention.”
A fire official said the wall that collapsed was 16 feet high and 50 feet wide. “It was weak and preparations were on to reconstruct it. But the reconstruction work was stopped due to rain,” he added.
