City construction site collapse: Ordeal of victims still on
Speechless Abul Kalam Azad, 45, one of the victims of Nakhalpara construction site disaster, was found sitting alone at a corner while everything that he had in his house were being demolished by the bulldozers and disappeared under the sands.
"I just escaped from death along with my wife, our three-year old child and 70-year old father amid the midnight darkness leaving all that we had. I could not save even my baby bottle and its toys," said Azad in tears.
"We had everything. We had a house on a piece of our own land. Now we are totally refugees as our piece of land with our house went under the ditch."
Azad said like him all the residence of three collapsed buildings were experiencing the same sufferings.
Around 40 other families were waiting for risk-free situation after filling up the ditch.
The construction site at Nakhalpara in the city's Tejgaon Industrial Area subsided taking with it an adjacent road and three tin-shed houses after the pilings collapsed early Saturday, also causing cracks on nearby multi-storey buildings.
Five construction workers were also injured as they tumbled in the ditch formed after the cave-in.
Azad said none of the officials of the Impulse Medical College and Hospital authorities met them and showed any sympathy or for compensation.
After the landslide that resulted into the collapse of three one-storey buildings, tilting of two five-storey buildings with cracks and rendering homeless to at least 45 families,
Army personnel started filling up the huge ditch to save those buildings, which were yet to collapse.
Maj Md Khijir Khan of Army Engineering Core told The Daily Star that they would dump around one million cubic feet of sands and soils into the ditch to save the buildings.
60 Army personnel in support of 27 dumping trucks and three bulldozers were working in this purpose.
Considering it dangerous, personnel from the Army, police and fire service deployed at the site did not allow anybody to go down to the ditch to recover some of their family materials as they apprehended that the buildings, which were at risky condition might have collapsed at anytime.
Meanwhile, the victim families filed six cases with Tejgaon Police Station against the hospital authorities On Saturday night Rajdhani Unnyan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) filed another case for violating the Real Estate Development and Management Act. But a number of victims alleged police for their negligence in this connection.
OC of Tejgaon Police Station Omar Faruq said they were trying to arrest the accused persons, but all the accused went into hiding.
Khaleda Yiasmin, one of the directors of the hospital, was found at the site and she said they were yet to think anything about compensating the victims and their rehabilitation.
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