India building collapse kills at least 65
NEW DELHI — Rescuers hammered slabs of concrete and dug with their hands today to pull survivors and bodies from a five-story apartment building that collapsed into a mountain of rubble in a poor New Delhi neighborhood. At least 65 people were killed and scores injured.
The 15-year-old building housing hundreds of people — mostly migrant workers and their families — collapsed Monday evening in New Delhi’s congested Lalita Park area, where emergency efforts were hampered because vehicles had difficulty navigating its narrow alleyways.
“The scale of the tragedy is unprecedented,” New Delhi’s top elected official, Sheila Dikshit, said as she toured the site.
Residents said they heard a rumble like thunder as the building collapsed upon itself. Then they sprinted to the site.
“There was nothing left, only people helping each other. There were so many dead bodies, there was no movement at all,” said Dil Nawaz Ahmed, a 25-year-old journalist who lives nearby.
He dug into the piles of concrete, bricks and mortar with other volunteers and managed to help free five injured residents, he said. But he mainly pulled out bodies, which he carried to waiting ambulances several buildings away.
M.D. Shahanawaz, a 23-year-old student, teared up as his hopes for a friend who lived in the building dwindled.
“He’s dead,” he said. “Everybody is coming out critical or dead.”
The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear. One official said the building may have been weakened by water damage following monsoon rains; Residents said the landlord was illegally constructing an additional floor on the building.
Officials ordered the evacuation of at least one other nearby building that they feared could collapse too, Dikshit said. It also had a flooded basement.
Police said they had filed charges against Amrit Singh, the owner of the building, and a search was on to locate him. Residents said he fled the area right after the building collapsed.
Local volunteers digging for survivors with their bare hands eventually were joined by police and firefighters, who used jackhammers to cut through the iron rods jutting from the wreckage. Police brought in sniffer dogs to locate people trapped under the debris.
Many rescuers were still working with sledgehammers and their hands Tuesday to remove the rubble stone by stone and pull out bodies as neighbors watched from nearby rooftops.
When workers carried a body away from the site on a stretcher, nearby rescuers stopped what they were doing and clasped their hands together in respect for the dead.
At one point, the rescuers uncovered the body of a small child.
