Bangalore's leaning building poses threat to nearby structures

A five-storey illegal building at Electronics City is leaning dangerously after its two foundation pillars sank five feet on Tuesday morning.

The building is visibly tilted and seems like it can collapse on the building on its left any time. The neighbouring building belongs to Brajesh, a software consultant, and his wife Swetha, an advocate, and has 13 houses given on rent.

The building whose pillars sank belongs to one Vijay, a native of Tamil Nadu. He was constructing a five-storey building on a 30X50 sq ft site at Vinayaka Nagar at Electronics City II stage. The wooden scaffolding broke as the building’s pillars sank.

Pradeep, a software engineer who lives on the second floor of the neighbouring building, said he and his housemates rushed out of the house with their mobile phones and credit cards when their building’s caretaker raised an alarm that the building was collapsing.

People living around the leaning building informed fire department about it at 6.50 am. Firemen rushed to the spot and immediately evacuated the neighbouring buildings. Also, they removed LPG cylinders from all the houses to avoid explosion if the leaning building collapsed on their building. As some houses in the neighbouring building were locked, the firemen broke their doors to take out the cylinders.

Huge crowd gathered near the building after it got tilted. The police were busy trying to keep the curious onlookers away from the building.

Even though the building’s pillars sank at 5 am, work did not begin till late afternoon to tackle the danger it posed. Neither the panchayat officials nor the fire department personnel knew what to do.

At 2 pm, technical advisor and director of Civil Aid Technology Pvt Ltd arrived on the spot and said the building would be brought down in four-five days through scientific method. They asked the fire department to put 1,000-odd sandbags near the sunken pillars to keep it from tilting further. The sandbags were immediately arranged.

Work to demolish the building began at 7.30 pm and continued the whole night. It was decided to demolish the walls of the building’s first and second floors, so that it collapses on the vacant site in front of it.