It was a few seconds and a persistent neighbour that saved a family of three whose home collapsed just as they exited their dilapidated building at B.K. Nagar in Yeshwantpur on Monday night. The collapse, allegedly due to intense rains, occurred on the same day a building in Ejipura buckled, claiming seven lives.
Around 9.30 p.m., the neighbour, Govind, who was outside his house on a narrow lane in area, noticed the two-storey building shaking slightly. The provisions store on the ground floor was locked but a family continued to live on the first floor.
“It is an old building, perhaps around 30 years old, and the rains of the past week had weakened its foundation. I could see that it was moving a little, with cracks appearing slowly,” he told The Hindu .
He immediately ran up the building and asked the family to vacate immediately. The family was hesitant at first. “We were seeing TV and everything was normal. We couldn’t feel any shaking. But Govind kept persisting and nearly forced us out,” said Priyanka, a I PU student and the youngest member of the family. “Within 10 seconds of us coming out, the building just buckled...We had only a mobile phone with us, nothing else,” she said.
At the time of the incident, her father Chinnaswamy, who works in a factory at Peenya, and mother Sharada, a homemaker, were staying with her. Her elder brother Pramod was at work in a courier shop. The family had lived in the rented house for 12 years.
Possessions salvaged
On Tuesday morning, two machines attempted to clear the rubble. The family hung around anxiously, attempting to salvage whatever was not destroyed. Luckily for them, a cupboard with their gold and other savings was damaged but intact, allowing them to retrieve their clothes, books and documents.
According to residents of the neighbourhood, the building stood adjacent to a storm-water drain that was heavily encroached upon. “There was 4 feet of water that stagnated for more than day here [because of the rains]. Old buildings are always in danger because of this,” said Gurunath, whose house was reconstructed earlier this year to be around 3 feet above the road level.
The Yeshwantpur police said no criminal case has been filed as the incident is being considered a “natural disaster”.
