At least 100 people have been trapped in the rubble of a five-storey building collapsing into an industrial city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, a local lawmaker has said.
Not all of the 200 residents of the building in the Mahad city of the Raigad district, about 165 km (100 miles) south of the financial capital of India, Mumbai, were home when it got dirty in the evening, Bharatshet said. Maruti Gogawale to the Reuters news agency.
“I believe about 100 to 125 people must have been inside at the time of his collapse,” Gogawale, who was present at the site, told Reuters.
The building consisted of 47 flats, police in Mahad said in a statement.
Rescue teams and dogs were deployed at the scene of the accident, a statement from the Indian National Disaster Response Force said.
Local authorities said more than two dozen people were pulled by rescue teams and taken to hospital amid heavy monsoon rains.
“We understand that up to 70 people may be caught under the rubble,” regional police chief Anil Paraskar had said earlier on Monday.
Television footage showed local residents and police officers flipping through tin sheets and other wreckage in a desperate search for survivors.
A man removes the rubble after a five-story building collapsed in Raigad in the western state of Maharashtra [Reuters]
Former Mahad lawmaker Manik Motiram Jagtap told local TV9 Marathi channel that the structure was 10 years old and built on “weak” foundations.
“It fell like a house of cards,” he said. “It’s a scary situation.”
The office of Uddhav Thackeray, chief minister of the state of Maharashtra, said on Twitter that he had been in contact with local representatives in the area.
“He assured her that all possible support would be extended for rapid rescue and relief work,” the tweet said.
The cause of the accident was not clear. But building collapses are common in India, mostly due to sluggish construction, substandard materials and disregard of regulations.
More than 1,200 people were killed in 1,161 building blasts in India in 2017, according to latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau.
Many of these accidents occur between June and September during the monsoon season, which plays a vital role in stimulating agricultural crops in South Asia.
But the monsoon season also causes widespread death and destruction, flooding, triggering building burglaries and overcoming low-lying villages.
The death toll from monsoon-related disasters has risen to 1,200 this year, including more than 800 lives lost in India alone, according to a census by the AFP news agency.
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