JOIN USA labourer died and four others including one woman were injured after the roof of a scrap godown caved in on Tuesday in east Delhi's Karawal Nagar area.
The labourers were hired to clean the warehouse.
Fifty five-year-old Rajender Kumar was declared dead at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, said an official of the Fire Department, which led the rescue operation.
Rohtas, 50, Satya Dev, 40, Bunny, 40, and Sita, 42, have been admitted to GTB Hospital.
“Sita was first taken to Jag Pravesh Chandra Hospital and later shifted to GTB Hospital,” the official said.
The mishap took place when the labourers were clearing scrap off the roof of the godown, he added.
The rescue operation was stated at around 11.45 am. “We received a call about a building collapse in Karawal Nagar. We pressed four vehicles into service. The injured were taken to the hospital by 3 pm,” he added.
“The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams kept searching the premises with sniffer dogs for any survivor till after 6 pm,” he said.
Though the city received light showers in the afternoon, it did not hamper the rescue operation, the official added.
Experts said that such accidents can be averted if the civic agencies carry out surveys to check illegal construction.
The three municipal corporations in the city have been slack in conducting surveys to identity “dangerous buildings” under their areas. They carry out the survey once a year, before the monsoon season.
So far this year they have been able to find only 54 “dangerous buildings”.
While the survey conducted by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation this year has found only 35 dangerous buildings so far in all the six zones, the East Delhi Municipal Corporation surveyed 3,75,255 buildings this year and found two dangerous buildings and marked three complexes as “repairable”.
The South Delhi Municipal Corporation has identified 17 dangerous buildings falling under its jurisdiction so far this year.
Officials with the corporations said that some wards have not been covered under the survey.