Four workers were killed after earth caved in at a construction site at Pangappara here on Monday afternoon. The land caved in from a height of more than 25 feet when work on a retaining wall was going on.
Three of the deceased workers were from West Bengal and one from Kerala. The workers have been identified as Harnad Burman (27), Bhajan Burman (20), and Sopan, all from Cooch Behar district in West Bengal, and Unnikrishnan (26) from Vengodu. One worker, Sudarshan (45) from Vengodu, has been admitted to the Government Medical College Hospital with injuries.
According to the workers there, the incident occurred around 3 p.m. when the workers were involved in the retaining wall work at the foot of a vertically carved hill. Following the rain over the past few days, the mud had turned soft and unstable.
“The entire piece of land, right from the top, started caving in. They did not have much time to run away. Within a flash, all of them were caught underneath the huge mound of mud. We were at work a little away from the retaining wall,” said Shaibul Islam, one of the workers. They had started working at the site more than six months ago.
Tough time
Fire and Rescue Services personnel were at the site in no time, but had to take quite an effort to remove the land which had caved in.
“We had to remove mud of the height of about a five-storey building. Since parts of the retaining wall had also caved in, they also had to be broken down. Also, we had to ensure that more of the land did not cave in, thus burying the rescue workers and the earth mover, ” the Sreekaryam police said. The Kerala Land Reforms Cooperative Society was managing the construction site. A 19-storeyed apartment complex is being planned here.
