At least 100 feared trapped in India building collapse
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At least 100 people are feared trapped in the debris of a five-storey building that collapsed on Monday in an industrial town in western India, a lawmaker said.
Not all the roughly 200 residents of the building in Mahad, about 165 km south of India’s financial capital Mumbai, were at home when it crumbled in the evening, Bharatshet Maruti Gogawale, the local lawmaker, said.
“I believe about 100 to 125 people must have been inside at the time of its collapse,” Gogawale, who was present at the site, told Reuters.
The building comprised around 47 flats, according to the police department of western Maharashtra state.
Maharashtra’s chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray, assured the local administration of all possible support for speedy rescue and relief work, his office said on Twitter.
The Guardian reports that cause of the accident was not immediately clear, but building collapses are common during India’s June-September monsoon, with old and rickety structures buckling under the weight of non-stop rain.
More than 1,200 people were killed in 1,161 building collapses across India in 2017, according to latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau.
TV channels showed footage of the debris with locals and police trying to reach the trapped people. The TV footage also showed at least one ambulance leaving the area as people surrounding it made frantic phone calls.
