Nine persons were rescued till late Wednesday after 18 people were trapped under the debris. At Pimpri Chinchwad, near Pune, where a waste mountain collapsed on part of a building on Wednesday, a race against time is underway. Of the 18 people trapped under the debris, nine have been rescued while one has been pulled out dead. Another body has now been spotted, but rescue teams said they will need time to reach that point. The remaining seven are still missing.
Amid heavy rain in Pune and surrounding areas, the waste mountain in Moshi crashed into the building around 1.30 pm on Wednesday. At the time, 23 people were in the building, which serves as the administrative office of a waste-to-energy project. Five of them managed to escape in time, but the others were trapped.
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What makes rescue challenging
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has been running a rescue operation at the spot for nearly two days now. NDRF officials have said that while one portion of the building has collapsed, another has lifted off the ground, creating a precarious situation. Rescue teams have made a duct on the lifted side for access inside the debris, where the missing eight are trapped.
NDRF officials said they have been extremely careful while handling the rubble. “That is why we were successful in rescuing nine persons. We have worked both manually and with machines. We are making all-out efforts to pull out those who are missing,” said an NDRF official.
Civic body blames rain
The waste-to-energy project is part of an agreement between Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation and Antony Lara Renewable Energy Ltd. According to officials, the mound has ‘legacy waste’, meaning untreated solid waste and industrial byproducts left in old landfills or dumpsites for long.
The civic body has blamed heavy rain for the incident. City Engineer Sanjay Kulkarni, who also heads the civic environment department and the Moshi garbage depot, has said the building was built at least 30 metres from the garbage mountain. “It is wrong to say we had not taken adequate safety steps. We keep clearing it. We put soil into the garbage, and it is hardened. Even trucks and earthmovers climb atop it to clear garbage in a phased manner. We never thought the hardened stuff would loosen this way. It has never happened. Due to heavy rainfall, water entered the garbage mound, and it became loose,” he said. Asked why a wall was not constructed around the mound, Kulkarni said, “The building was at a safe distance from the heap of garbage; we never thought about it.”
Angry relatives blame civic body
“The building should not have been built so close to the mountain of garbage. The civic body does not seem to have taken enough care to ensure the safety of those working in the garbage depot,” said Santosh Kumbhar, a relative of Mahesh Kumbhar, who remains missing.
Mahesh Kumbhar works as a human resources professional in the building. Santosh said Mahesh married less than a month ago and was looking for a flat on rent so that his wife could shift to Pune with him. “We got a call at 1 am and I left at 2 am, reached here at 10 am. No official has met me till now. Other than the phone call, the company has not told us anything. We just hope everyone comes out safely,” he told The Indian Express earlier.
At the spot, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Suryavanshi was seen assuring the relatives of those missing, saying that all efforts are being made to bring them out.
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