An Uttar Pradesh police officer, who reached the spot minutes after receiving a Police Control Room (PCR) call, recalled what went down in the last four days starting Tuesday night and said that initially, it was difficult to figure out how many buildings had collapsed.
The sub-inspector who has been at the site from the beginning said, he has gone back only to change his uniform, once, on Friday afternoon and taken meal breaks.
“I along with a senior sub-inspector, Station House Officer and the entire team of the police station were among the first responders. When we reached, it was debris all over and we could not understand how many buildings had collapsed. The locals told us there were two,” he said on condition of anonymity.
One was under construction where labourers were living with their families and another was fully constructed with one family residing.
Recalling the first hour, he said that the National Disaster Response Force reached within an hour but by then he and other officers attempted to skim through the debris in the hope that people might be alive. “The building’s second and third floor were right in front of us. We entered through the gates and windows using torches to check if anyone was alive but could not find anyone,” he claimed.
Keeping public at bay
Explaining the process of extracting the bodies, the officer said that as soon the teams spotted a body while the earthmover removed the debris, the operator was asked to stop the machine in the fear of killing the person in case he or she was alive.
The ambulance was kept ready to rush the person to the hospital. Meanwhile, public gathering at the site were constantly being asked to keep away, not to hinder the operation.
One by one, nine persons were taken out from under the debris. Three on Tuesday night, four on Wednesday evening and two in the new few hours.
Among the dead was a 14-months-old Pankhuri, her mother Priyanka, grandmother Rajkumari and uncle Shiv Kumar, all residents of Uttar Pradesh’s Mainpuri. The others were identified as brother Shamshad and Naushad, and Mobin, Mujahid and Ranjeet Bheemala.
