Pune, 9 July

Two more persons have been rescued from the debris of a building that collapsed at a waste management plant in Pimpri Chinchwad near Pune, taking the total number of survivors to nine, officials said on Thursday.

A three-storey building located over a waste-to-energy plant at Moshi in the area collapsed after a huge mound of garbage crashed onto it on Wednesday afternoon with around 18 people trapped under the rubble.

Seven of the victims were pulled out of the debris hours after the accident.

Post midnight, two more persons were rescued from the rubble and taken to the hospital. They are in stable condition, officials said.

A multi-agency rescue operation is underway to save the remaining victims, said Deputy Commissioner of Police Ganesh Ingale.

Employees of Antony Lara Renewable Energy, which operates the 14MW power plant in collaboration with the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, were among those trapped, an official had said on Wednesday.

The Pimpri Chinchwad civic body said in a release that 23 persons were initially believed to be trapped under the debris, of whom five managed to come out safely. A rescue operation was subsequently launched to extricate the others.

The operation was jointly carried out by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the Indian Army, the municipal fire brigade, the fire brigade of the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority and the police administration.

Rescue operations were continuing on a war footing to evacuate the remaining people, it added.

Moshi Pradhikaran is a planned neighbourhood in the Pimpri-Chinchwad city near Pune.

“The building stood next to a mountain-like pile of legacy (old) waste. Prima facie, it appears that due to heavy rains, the waste mound became loose and collapsed onto the building like a landslide,” Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Suryawanshi had said earlier.