Five dead, 23 hurt in Bandra building collapse

A four-storey building in the slums of suburban Bandra, collapsed on Sunday evening, killing five people and injuring many others.

The building in Behrampada area of Bandra collapsed at 4:30 pm yesterday and seven fire tenders and five ambulances were dispatched to the site. Twenty-three people were rescued from the debris of the unnamed building.

"Five bodies were retrieved and 23 others were rescued from the debris," the sources said.

All the injured were admitted to Bhabha Hospital, where five — Farzana, 34, Israil Shah, 20, Chandtara, 32, Chunnu Shah, 20, and an unidentified six-year-old girl were declared brought dead.

Fire Brigade officials said that it was an illegal structure, to which storeys had been added over the years. People were working in a small tailoring unit on the ground floor of the building at the time of the collapse.

Rescue and clearance work at the site was slow because the building is in a narrow lane.

Mumbai authorities have drawn up a list of 118 unsafe buildings in the city and of which only one has been evacuated so far. In 2005, five such buildings were collapsed in the city during the monsoons.