Pune, July 9 (IANS) Rescue teams recovered one body from the debris of the building that collapsed at a waste management plant in Pimpri Chinchwad near Pune on Thursday, while nine people have been rescued so far as multi-agency teams continued intensive search operations to trace those still trapped beneath the rubble, officials said.
The three-storey structure, situated above a waste-to-energy plant at Moshi, came crashing down on Wednesday afternoon after a massive mound of legacy waste collapsed onto the building, burying the structure and trapping around 18 people under the debris.
Seven people were rescued within hours of the incident, while two more were pulled out safely after midnight, taking the total number of survivors to nine.
Providing an update on the ongoing rescue efforts, a senior National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) official said one body was recovered on Thursday morning, while the locations of two more bodies have also been identified beneath the debris.
“The NDRF is doing its best. We are making our entry from the horizontal space, which has been dug manually with the help of hands and that all. And we have reached and narrowed it down to two bodies, while another one has been recovered,” Commandant of the 5th Battalion of the NDRF, S.B. Singh, told reporters.
“Three bodies have been traced. One has been recovered; the other two are still under rubble, of which the second is visible from afar, but it will take some time,” he added.
Singh said the operation remained extremely challenging as the damaged structure was in a highly unstable condition, posing a constant risk to rescuers working at the site.
“The first and foremost challenge is that the building can collapse, in which my rescuers can be caught. So, that is the greatest challenge, because the building is highly unstable and a lot of load is there. To find out the structural stability of the building, we are trying our best, in whichever way we can enter, so that further collapse doesn’t happen; whoever is trapped inside, they don’t get further suppressed or burdened by a lot of rocks and a lot of concrete material. So, that’s the greatest challenge we are facing,” he added.
He further explained that access to the collapsed building was extremely difficult because the structure had tilted at an angle of nearly 45 degrees, leaving rescuers with no option but to crawl through narrow openings to reach those trapped inside.
Singh said heavy machinery could not be used to remove the concrete debris as the vibrations could trigger another collapse, further endangering both the trapped victims and rescue personnel. As a result, teams are carefully removing the rubble manually.
“It will certainly take time, but we’ll do our best,” he said.
The NDRF officer also stated that despite using advanced life detection equipment, including life detectors, acoustic sensors and sniffer dogs, rescuers had not detected any signs of life beneath the debris.
Officials said several employees of Antony Lara Renewable Energy, which operates the 14 MW waste-to-energy plant in partnership with the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), were among those trapped when the building collapsed.
The PCMC had initially stated that 23 people were believed to be trapped under the debris. Of them, five managed to escape on their own before rescue teams reached the site and launched operations.
The rescue mission is being carried out jointly by personnel from the National Disaster Response Force, the Indian Army, the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation Fire Brigade, the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority Fire Brigade and the police.
–IANS
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