Raipur, September 25: The death toll from the collapse of a giant chimney in central India rose to 36 on Friday, with many more bodies set to be pulled from the debris, a local government official said.
A team of more than 300 people has been working at the site for over 48 hours to remove the huge pile of smashed concrete that covers the site where the partially built chimney once stood.
“We have recovered 36 bodies, many more are trapped below,” senior government officer Ashok Agarwal told AFP on Friday.
The accident occurred on Wednesday when the 100-metre (330-foot) structure at a power plant in Korba town in the state of Chhattisgarh collapsed in stormy weather.
A top union official at the company building the chimney — Balco, a subsidiary of London-listed resources giant Vedanta — told AFP Thursday he feared 100 workers had been killed.
Late Thursday, police had put the death toll at 25.
“There is very little hope of finding anyone alive below the debris but we will continue the rescue operation on Friday,” Agarwal said.
He said the government was investigating whether the company was using low quality materials for the building, as charged by trade union officials.
The rescue effort has been hampered by a lack of reliable lists of workers and difficulty in contacting the family members of victims, most of whom are migrant labourers from two neighbouring eastern Indian states.
Minor construction site accidents are relatively common in India, where health and safety rules are routinely flouted, though this is one of the worst in recent history.
In other incidents, a partially built bridge on the flagship Delhi Metro project collapsed in July, killing five, and there was also an accident during the construction of a flyover in the southern city of Hyderabad.
“Thirty earth-moving machines have been pressed into service to clear the debris and rescue the trapped people,” Agarwal added.
Balco is a 51-percent-owned unit of London Stock Exchange-listed resource giant Vedanta Plc, whose activities are focused on India. The Indian government holds the remaining 49 percent.
Balco has been expanding its aluminium operations in the mineral-rich state, which is the hotbed of a Maoist insurgency in which thousands of people have died since the late 1960s.
–Agencies