AP hotel collapse toll rises to 17

Rescue workers from the National Industrial Security Academy (NISA) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) who are sifting through the rubbles of the collapsed City Light Hotel at Secunderabad found four bodies on Tuesday, including Venkatesh, the tea master of the Irani Tea joint.

The 80-year-old hotel Located on RP Road in Secunderabad collapsed on Monday.

The bodies of first shift cook Kiran and hotel manager Ali Razak, besides that of an unidentified person, were also found, taking the death toll in the incident to 17.

Rescuers digging through the debris for the second day on Tuesday believe that at least two more people were buried under the collapsed building.

A little after midnight on Monday, Disaster management experts from National Industrial Security Academy rescued an injured person, Kamalakar, even as the family of the hotel owner Syed Hasan Ali anxiously awaited news on his nephew Ali Kirmani, who was believed to be in the hotel’s kitchen when the building came down.

Pradeep Das from Odisha, one of the survivors, said: “There are 40 men from our state working in the City Light hotel but in different shifts. My friends Santosh, Rajeev, Murali and Manoj died. Even though we belong to the same state I do not know all of them. We work as servers and cooks, save some money and send it home.”