More Bodies Pulled From Collapsed Building in India
|
Version 0 of 1. NEW DELHI — The deaths from the collapse of a 12-story building in the southern Indian city of Chennai rose to 19 on Monday even as some of those trapped were pulled out alive through heavy rains. At least 42 people have been rescued, and 23 of them were hospitalized, Inspector Pusp Raj of the Chennai police said. Dozens more were still feared trapped. Rescuers pulled out a woman with head injuries Monday morning, according to Indian press reports. In another accident, at least 10 people were killed on Saturday when a decrepit four-story building collapsed in New Delhi. That building was illegally constructed decades ago, officials said, and its collapse was partly attributed to construction work on an adjoining building. The police in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu State, arrested six people on Sunday, including the partners of the construction company, the architect and the structural engineer, and charged them with criminal negligence in connection with the building collapse there, said P. Subramniam, a Chennai police officer. The Chennai building had two towers, one of which collapsed after heavy rains. The building, which had 42 apartments, was as yet unoccupied, but its construction was largely complete. Building collapses are common in India, where construction standards are poor, and municipal authorities rarely condemn buildings even when they appear to have dangerous defects. But even unsafe buildings attract people who want to live in them because the competition for shelter is fierce among millions of city residents. In January, at least 15 workers were killed when a residential building under construction collapsed in the southern state of Goa, and last September, at least 50 people died when a 33-year-old building collapsed in Mumbai. In April 2013, at least 72 people were killed when a building collapsed in a suburb of Mumbai, one of the deadliest construction accidents in decades in India. Some of the construction workers had been living at the site as they worked on the building. |