Mumbai - Rescue workers in Mumbai searched
for more than a dozen people feared trapped in a 117-year-old,
six-storey building that collapsed early on Thursday, following
two days of torrential rain in India's commercial and financial
hub.
Eleven people had been confirmed dead, and 14 had been
injured and taken to hospital, with four firemen also injured,
the chief fire official said.
"There was a massive bang. We couldn't see anything due to
the dust and smoke. Once the dust settled, we realised it was a
building collapse," said area resident Amina Sheikh.
Disaster struck early in the morning as Mumbai was emerging
from two days of heavy rain that flooded the city and killed 14
people.
The collapse was the second in Mumbai in a little over a
month. In late July, 17 people were killed when a four-storey
building crumbled after undergoing suspected unauthorised
renovations.
The building that collapsed on Thursday, in one of the most
densely populated areas of the city, had been declared
dilapidated by the city's municipal housing authority in 2011.
But it was still inhabited by an unknown number of
residents.
Desperate relatives of those trapped pleaded with rescuers
to help find their loved ones after getting phone calls from
trapped survivors. About 200 police and fire personnel sorted
through the debris.
Police had yet to determine what caused the collapse near
Crawford market, a landmark of south Mumbai's old city with
narrow streets packed with markets and shops. Many Muslims live
in the neighbourhood.
Rescuers, including a team from the National Disaster
Response Force, said the area's narrow roads were making it
difficult to bring in the excavators.
The building housed a sweet shop warehouse on the ground
floor. Smoke rose from the ruins.
A housing trust that was looking to redevelop the area said
the building had been declared unsafe in 2011 and the housing
board had offered alternative accommodation to tenants, but only
seven families had moved out by early 2014.
One residents in the area said people had not been given
proper details of what type of new housing they would be
provided, making them reluctant to leave.
It was not immediately clear what housing regulators had
done to encourage residents to evacuate.
The building was also among 791 buildings that the city's
municipal corporation has listed as dangerous this year.
Only a few of those buildings have been evacuated or
demolished, and more than 500 of them were still being occupied,
an official of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corp told Reuters.