Buried under tonnes of concrete, saw death stopping 6 inches away, recount warehouse survivor

Kolkata: On Wednesday, Debashis Das saw death lurk just six inches away.When a giant concrete slab crashed down at the under-construction warehouse at Taratala, the 43-year-old labourer thought he and four others would not make it out alive.

Pinned beneath tonnes of concrete in a narrow air pocket, they lay flat and watched the slab sink closer until it stopped barely 6 inches above their faces.“We were lying flat. The slab was initially high above us but kept coming down. It finally stopped just 6 inches away. I told the others, ‘This is it. We are finished.’ Everyone started screaming,” Das said from the hospital, after surviving one of the most dramatic rescues in the warehouse collapse that has claimed 17 lives so far.For hours, the five workers remained trapped in darkness, surrounded by dust, debris and fear. With no cellphone signal inside the collapsed structure, they kept shouting, hoping someone outside would hear them before the unstable concrete shifted again.Eventually, they heard voices.NDRF personnel, firefighters and other rescue workers located the men beneath the rubble. Realising that heavy machinery could cause the slab to move and crush those trapped underneath, the teams began cutting through concrete and twisted steel reinforcement bars by hand and with precision tools.

“They cut the slab and rescued us. I saw the NDRF team in their orange and purple uniforms,” Das said. Only after an opening was drilled could rescuers pass water to the trapped workers, who were without food or water for hours. Oxygen was scarce in the cramped space.Das suffered injuries to his head, eye, hands and legs. He said he feared many of his co-workers were still buried when he was brought out.Recalling the moments before the collapse, Das said there were warning signs.

The floor vibrated as compressor machines pumped ready-mix concrete onto the slab.“There was some vibration. Since the upper slab had already been cast while the lower portion had not, some shaking was expected. But we never imagined the entire structure would collapse. We thought that, at worst, one side might give way. Within seconds, everything came down like a house of cards,” he said.Das and eight members of his team arrived from Shyamnagar the previous evening after being promised Rs 1,000 a day, more than the Rs 600-Rs 650 they usually earn.

They were hired through a labour contractor for a four-day concreting job.He also questioned safety practices at the site, saying no attendance register was maintained and no identity details or signatures were taken. “We simply walked in. The security guard asked how many of us had come and allowed us inside. Nobody wrote down our names or kept any records,” he said. “There had to be some defect. Otherwise, how could such a building collapse?” he said.“I will never come back to this line of work again. If I can find any other job, I will do that instead,” he said.His wife Annapurna said: “I don’t want him to get back to this work again. But he needs to earn. He is the sole earning member and his mother is down with a kidney ailment. Much of our savings go for her treatment only.”