No building sketch, rescue op hit

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 22

Had the factory building plan or sketch provided to the rescue teams, more lives could have been saved, asserts a senior official of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) leading the rescue operation.

Shashi Chandra, second-in-command of the NDRF rescue team at Mustak Ganj Chowk where poly bags-manufacturing factory Amarson Polymers had collapsed on Monday, while talking to The Tribune said today that had the building plan handed over to the rescue teams, more lives could have been saved.

“On Monday when we reached the spot, we asked for the building plan, but nobody was able to provide it. We initiated the operation as per our guided strategies. Two lives were saved. Had we gotten building plan, we could have combed the debris accordingly and more lives could have been saved,” Chandra said.

An NDRF official said the tragedy had reminded him of the similar incident in Jalandhar. A triple-storey building of industrialist Shital Vij fell on the intervening night of April 15 and 16, 2012 when workers in the night shift were weaving blankets. It took eight days for the NDRF team, Army personnel and volunteers to finish the rescue operation. Twenty-three labourers had died and 27 were injured.

“Then I was also part of the NDRF team in Jalandhar. We were able to recover several men alive from the debris because we had the building sketch. We combed the debris accordingly and saved over a dozen men from the debris. But in the fresh case, we were doing rescue operation without any building sketch, due to which we could not reach the trapped persons in short time,” he recalls.