'There are still 11 people missing'

It was a little over 30 hours since the top three floors of Poonam Chambers, Worli, collapsed. At around 10.30 pm on Wednesday, the firemen had stepped out for a breather, just after recovering the dead body of a young girl. And the remainder of the structure, which had been hanging precariously from the fifth floor, came crashing down.

Non-stop work over the last 48 hours has led to the recovery of 36 people. Nine are being treated in hospital, 10 received mild treatment before being sent home, 11 did not require hospitalisation and six died in the collapse.

Deputy Chief Fire Officer M G Sirkhot enters the makeshift control post located in one of the fire engines. It's time for a meeting with the chairman of the Cable Corporation of India, whose office was destroyed in the collapse. Both the firemen and the Bombay municipal corporation have certified the A wing of Poonam Chambers as safe; work progresses rapidly to restore the electric connections.

"I have seen the total and partial collapse of many buildings," says Sirkhot, who is substituting for the presently-on-leave Chief Fire Officer V V Rao. "But I have never, in all my experience, seen a building collapse like this one did. Most collapses are peripheral; in Poonam Chambers, the upper three floors of the building collapsed completely, burying the basement of the building. Besides, it was the tallest building in the city to have collapsed."

"This building," he continues, "had a complicated design. Though it was an approved structure, there was not a single beam in the entire building. Instead, it was made of slabs and columns, each balancing the other. So, if one fell down, there was nothing to support the other. That is why the building came down like a pack of cards."

Behind him, the debris is slowly being cleared; the firemen use the newly acquired space to try and reach the basement which served as the office for the Standard Chartered Bank.

"The entire terrace slab was hanging on the fifth floor," recalls Sirkhot. "One of the columns was hanging loose; as were the pipes, duct wings and all the upper floor walls of the building. Death was constantly hovering over our heads; we knew that the fractured building was an accident waiting to happen, but we had to carry on. And the accident did happen last night. If my men had not come out for a breath of fresh air, we would have lost at least 30 firemen."

He is obviously worried about his men; but that worry is shouldered aside by concern for the victims, "There are still 11 people missing. If they are in the basement, there might be alive. But if they were caught by the slabs or the columns, then there is very little hope. I just want to clear the debris as fast as possible. The sooner I do that, the sooner my men can go home."

The firemen have been at it in shifts of two for the last 48 hours. They need to sleep, but do not find it them to go home. Instead, they hang about the site, helping their colleagues, hoping against hope that someone down there might still be alive.

But doesn't the department have contingency plans for disasters where every moment counts. Sirkhot smiles tiredly, "You cannot have a contingency plan in this kind of situation. Each building is built differently, so you cannot predict how it will collapse. We do have a requirement plan, that deals with how many men we need, what kind of equipment is required, etc."

"So we have all the men and equipment we need. You see, the basement may have some survivors; heavy equipment like cranes and bulldozers may cause it to cave in. Some one suggested use of helicopters, but that brings in its own set of complications."

As for tips for people caught in such disasters, he shakes his head, "There is no safety precaution a victim can take in such a situation. What can you do if you are inside an aircraft that has lost control and is crashing to earth... you can only hope."

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