KOLKATA: (UPDATE) Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today directed the armed forces to provide all assistance in relief and rescue operations in the flyover collapse in Kolkata. Read More
Police today sealed the local office of IVRCL, a Hyderabad-based company which had taken up the construction work a flyover here, a portion of which collapsed on a congested road intersection killing 18 people. Read More
Motionless bodies, body parts smeared in blood, scattered iron girdles and concrete slabs of collapsed part of an under-construction flyover were at the site teeming with hundreds of policemen, rescue workers, Armymen, a couple of hours after the tragedy.
Scattered shoes, slippers, water bottles, broken glass panes, hand bags were seen all over the busy Vivekananda Road and Tagore Street crossing spot, called the Ganesh Talkies area, as the security personnel and rescuers were sifting through the rubble in search of survivors. Read More
Amid sights of despair and distress, angry locals vented their ire against the West Bengal government's "feeble" attempts to rescue the injured from the debris of the flyover that collapsed in the city on Thursday. Read More
Their grievances were against the state's disaster management units which, they said, "arrived late".
Many people protested when city mayor Sovan Chattopadhyay arrived at the spot to take stock of the situation.
"The teams came late and with nothing that could help in the rescue process," a resident of Girish Park area, that is close to the collapse site, told IANS.
"The team took gas cutters, beam cutters, ring cutters from an adjacent shop. They just came wearing jackets," said another.
A long section of a road overpass under construction collapsed Thursday in a crowded Kolkata neighborhood, with tons of concrete and steel slamming into midday traffic, leaving at least 21 people dead and scores of others injured in the Indian city, police said.
Rescuers used saws, small cranes and their bare hands to dig through the wreckage in search of survivors.
At least 21 people were killed, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. It was not immediately clear how many people remained missing.