75 families vacate 100-year-old building hours before it collapses

About 75 families were saved in the nick of time in the city on Saturday. The five-storey building in which they resided came crashing down just hours after they had vacated it.

The Reay building which collapsed, opposite the dockyard railway station, was more than 100 years old. As in many other such cases, residents had been reluctant to move out despite warnings by the civic authorities about the dilapidated condition of their building. But, luckily for them, one of the residents, Shafique Qureshi, noticed cracks in a wall on Friday and raised an alarm.
Some of the residents got together to approach the local corporator to pay a visit and take a decision to vacate the building.

Almost all the families were persuaded to move out on Friday night, and the building collapsed on Saturday around 1pm.
“We saw the cracks on Friday evening. Some debris was also trickling out. We alerted the residents and also called upon the local corporator Yeshwant Jadhav to vacate Reay building,” said Mohsin, a local shopkeeper.

However, a few residents decided to take a chance and spend the night in the building because of their personal circumstances. One such person was Mallapa Vitthal Shetty, who could not move his 86-year-old bed-ridden mother, Chinabai, out of the building at night and decided to stay back.

As luck would have it, the room they were in was in a corner of the building that remained intact even as major portions of it collapsed. Guided by firemen, Shetty and his mother escaped with the help of a ladder and trolley. “Our neighbours knew that we were trapped inside. They called out to us and told us to be calm and listen to the firemen,” said Shetty. As they were brought down to safety, the neighbours cheered with joy and relief.

“We were guided by the residents who had vacated the building on the people and even pets trapped inside. No time was lost as we had their exact location,” said P Rahangale, deputy fire officer, satisfied that not a single life was lost in the building collapse.

Most of the 75 families had been residing in the building for decades and had developed strong bonds despite belonging to different communities. There were emotional scenes as first the Shettys and then Sakina Ibrahim and Laurence Fernandes were rescued.

“We could see from our third floor room how Chinabai was rescued and we had faith that the firemen would save us too. We decided to wait instead of venturing out on our own,” said Fernandes.

While the fire department will conduct an investigation, the assistant municipal commissioner of E ward has gone ahead and declared the cause of the collapse. “It was a very old building, which was being repaired by the Mumbai Repair and
Reconstruction Board (MMRB). There was leakage in the toilet block side, which weakened the structure,” said Prakash Patil

For the residents, the relief over their lucky escape soon started to give way to concerns over their future. Some of the families have been moved to the nearby police quarters and maidan. They have been informed by their corporator that they will be moved to Dharavi transit camp.

“Is this where we will have to stay for the rest of our lives? We don’t want to live in a transit camp. We had a full-fledged roof over our heads which we have lost. There should be a proper rehabilitation,” said Ayub, a resident of the Reay building which is no more.