9 rescued, one dead after waste mountain brings down building in Pune in heavy rain, traps 18 employees

Fire Officer at Pimpri Chinchwad Fire Department, Rushikant Chipade, said that the building has three floors including the basement. The nine people rescued last night were rescued from the floor above the basement. They had got stuck inside the building when it partially collapsed while they were eating food in the canteen. The body of another employee was recovered this morning and declared dead from the same floor.

Chipade said, “According to the list of employees that we have been provided, it is possible that eight more people are stuck inside on the same floor. The sniffer dogs that it come here were not able to detect anything. The stench of the landfill might also have caused that. The sensors that we have, the vibration sensors, sound sensors, and motion sensors, have not detected any activity on the floor. We tried them three times.”

“Currently we are manually digging through the garbage that has entered the building. We have identified symptoms of two people in the debris that we are working on right now,” he added.

The rescued staffers were identified as Vijay Sapkal, Somnath Shelke, Sachin Davadgaon, Dadasaheb Arde, Sujata Shinde, Rampratap Chavan and Ranveer Singh.

Teams from the Indian Army’s Southern Command, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the fire department, police, ambulances and other emergency response agencies launched a search and rescue operation. Officials said the structure that collapsed is the administrative building of the waste-to-energy project for which the PCMC has an agreement with Antony Lara Renewable Energy Ltd.

“This building is located next to the mound of the Secure Landfill Facility (SLF) of legacy waste. Due to very heavy rains in the region, a large portion of the SLF mound came down like a landslide on the building,” Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Suryavanshi said.

“There were 23 people in the building at the time, and five managed to come out. The remaining 18 were trapped. We soon managed to contact some of them and found them to be safe,” he added.

Legacy waste refers to accumulated, untreated solid garbage and industrial byproducts left in old landfills or dumpsites for long periods.

Officials said an earthmover was used to clear the piled-up garbage. Holes were drilled in the walls and roof to rescue the trapped people. NDRF teams attempted to establish contact with the trapped staff members by using acoustic devices and even made phone calls to identify their locations.

Portable cutters were used to shear through heavy metal grills and reinforcement bars across the windows to reach and make way for the trapped people. Later, a mobile blower was installed by the Army to facilitate ventilation in the trapped area.

Sanjay Kulkarni, City Engineer, who also heads the civic body’s environment department, told The Indian Express, “Fifteen workers were trapped on the ground floor of the building. They were shouting for help. We alerted the fire brigade and NDRF.”

“A joint task force of the Southern Command, comprising engineers and medical personnel, has been deployed to assist in the rescue and relief operations. The Army team is working in close coordination with the NDRF, police, fire services and other civil agencies to support the ongoing rescue efforts,” said Ankush Chavan, Public Relations Officer (Defence), Pune.

Minister Girish Mahajan, who visited the spot late night, said, “Pimpri-Chinchwad has been experiencing continuous rainfall for the past two days. This unfortunate incident occurred when a heap of debris collapsed onto a building. Efforts are currently underway to rescue the remaining trapped people and communication has been established with three persons trapped inside. As debris has fallen on their legs, operations are focused on clearing the rubble to bring them out safely. All agencies are fully mobilised to ensure their safe rescue, and it is expected that the operation will be completed by Thursday morning.”

With inputs from Manoj More