Apartment building collapses, kills eight
More than 30 trapped under rubble
MUMBAI, India — Rescuers pulled a small girl out alive Friday, nearly 12 hours after the collapse of a five-storey apartment building in India’s financial capital.
At least eight people were killed and dozens remained trapped under the rubble. A cheer erupted from hundreds of onlookers who began chanting “baby, baby” when rescuers working in a drizzling rain dug through the rubble and plucked the young girl out of a tunnel.
At least 32 people were rescued, but more than 30 were still missing and the search continued, said Alok Awasthi, local commander of the National Disaster Response Force.
Friday’s disaster was the third deadly building collapse in six months in Mumbai.
Relatives of the missing wailed and clung to one another, as heavy machinery lifted the largest slabs of concrete away.
Eight people were confirmed dead by late afternoon, Awasthi said.
“We will work all night. We’ll work 24/7 without stopping until everyone is found,” he said, adding that additional rescue teams from a nearby city, Pune, had been called in to assist with the rescue effort. The building collapsed just after 6 a.m. in southeast Mumbai.
Awasthi said it was owned by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corp., the city’s municipal government, and that most of the people who lived in its 22 apartments were city employees.