11 killed as building falls onto another

Eleven people, including eight minors, died and seven more were injured after a fourstorey building collapsed on an adjoining two-storey one in Malad, a western suburb of in Mumbai on Wednesday night, in what some people in the neighbourhood describer as a delayed impact of cyclone Tauktae that hit Mumbai in mid-may. Of the 11 dead, nine, including six minors, were from the same family. The structure that collapsed was an illegal building, with only the ground floor sanctioned; the other three were illegal according to local officials.

The Maharashtra government announced an ex-gratia of ₹5 lakh to the kin of each of the deceased and ₹50,000 for those who were injured. Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, in a statement, also said that the cost of the treatment will be covered by the state government.

According to Mumbai Fire Brigade (MFB) officials, who received a call around 11.45 pm on Wednesday informing of the incident, said the building that collapsed also damaged two more structures adjoining it. Seventy MFB personnel were involved in the rescue operations, officials said.

“The rescue and search operations were conducted for over 12 hours till 1 pm on Thursday. We rescued everyone by 1 am itself, but we had unconfirmed reports of a girl being trapped inside. Hence, we continued the search operations till Thursday afternoon but did not find anyone,” an MFB official aware of the operation said.

The official added, “The difficulty in carrying out search operations was such that we took time to have machinery reach the spot as the lane leading to the building were very narrow, barely 10 feet wide.”

While MFB officials claimed they reached the collapse site in