Mumbai People are traps in the Collapse Building
Rescuers are searching for at least 30 people feared trapped in a building collapse in Mumbai. Local reports say a five-stores building in India’s financial capital toppled early on Thursday. The building in the densely populated Bhendi Bazaar area was believed to be more than 100 years old.
Ambulances, fire engines and members of the disaster relief force are working at the site. Mumbai is recovering from heavy rains and flooding. The residential building gave way around 08:40 India time [03:10 GMT], reports said.
“Forty people are believed to be stuck inside and a 43-member team is conducting rescue operations,” an official for India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) told AFP. Building accidents are not uncommon in India, particularly during the monsoon season. Poor construction standards and old dilapidated structures are often to blame. Every year, dozens of people are killed in building collapses across India. In July, 17 people ware killed when a four-story building collapsed in the Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar.
Why people live in Mumbai’s dangerous buildings: More than 100 people have died after the buildings they were living in collapsed in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, between April and June this year. The BBC’s Kinjal Pandya investigates why hundreds of people are forced to live in these dangerous buildings. Braj Bhushan Chaubey is a young sales executive who lives in what the local municipality calls a “dangerous building” in Mumbai.
His home in Dadar area is a grotty, decaying three-stores building which the authorities, in a warning to its 50 residents, say is in a “ruinous condition, likely to fall and dangerous to any person occupying or passing by”. The walls have deep cracks and the paint is peeling. In his tiny 150 sq ft, apartment, where Mr Chaubey lives with his wife and a school-going seven-year-old daughter, a slab of the kitchen ceiling fell a few months ago.
“But I am forced to live here in danger. I cannot buy or rent a new flat in the neighborhood because they are very expensive and I cannot afford them. Also, if I move out of my neighborhood I will have to live far away from my office and my daughter’s school, resulting in long commuting hours,” he says. BBC News
