A day after a building came crashing down in a densely packed Seemapuri area of northeast Delhi, families living in the adjoining houses were still sitting on the road on Thursday, unable to collect even the essential belongings from their homes and unsure of where they would spend another night.
Women who spent the night outside said they borrowed sanitary pads from neighbours, used other people’s toilets and tried to keep their young children asleep on plastic sheets and mats.
Most families said they were yet to have a proper meal since Wednesday afternoon, after they were asked to vacate their homes. The entire row of houses was considered unsafe after the four-storey building collapsed in Seemapuri, and the clearance of debris was underway. Officials have said nearby damaged structures will also be dismantled.
A local woman with a three-month-old baby said she spent the night trying to keep her child away from the open road.
“We kept trying to make the children sleep while we stayed awake. What if a rat comes near my baby? What if mosquitoes bite the child? We have no water, no electricity and nowhere to sleep,” she said.
Residents said the collapsed structure brought down portions of three adjoining houses as it fell, with portions of brick walls ripped open, exposing bedrooms and sleeping areas to the lane. Beds, coolers, and other household belongings could be seen through broken walls.
“Since yesterday, nobody has asked us whether we have eaten or had water. We are sitting here with nothing. Some women are on their periods and are borrowing pads from neighbours. We are using other people’s bathrooms because we cannot go back inside,” said Kulsuma, 34, who lives on the third floor of one of the vacated houses here.
She added that neighbours and street vendors were giving them bananas and packets of chips to get through the day.
The fear of returning to the upper floors has now replaced the fear of spending the night outside, Kulsuma said.
“My father-in-law has a heart problem. How can I take him back upstairs when we don’t know whether the building is safe? We don’t know how long we will have to stay here or where we will go if they ask us to leave,” she said.
The narrow lane near Idgah Machhli Mandi was filled with families and household belongings, as residents waited outside their homes. On one side of the cramped passage stood tightly packed houses; on the other was the boundary wall of an eidgah, leaving little space for people to move through.
The collapse on Wednesday killed five people, including a 12-year-old girl, a 21-year-old woman who was around four months pregnant, and a toddler. Eight injured people were rescued and taken to the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital in Tahirpur.
Sayeda, 36, who lives in the adjoining building, said her two sons, aged 12 and six, were at home when the building collapsed and were later rescued by locals.
“When we came back, half our house was gone. The kitchen, bathroom and staircase had collapsed. Not even one utensil is left. Whatever we had kept outside was also destroyed,” she said, adding that she and her husband were at work when the building collapsed.
The incident has also left residents questioning the safety of the buildings around them. Officials have described the collapsed structure as a four-storey building, while locals claimed it had six floors and alleged that additional floors had been constructed over an older structure.
Residents alleged that the building had stood for over 20 years and that floors were added in the last two years.
“The owner kept building upwards over the old house. Whether it was plumbing, welding, or some other work, something was always being done. We told him many times that it was dangerous, but he would fight with us and would not listen,” a resident claimed.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi had earlier said neighbours reported cracks appearing in the structure following tremors caused by an earthquake in Uttarakhand on Tuesday evening. The exact cause of the collapse is yet to be ascertained.
Meanwhile, locals were among the first to rush towards the debris. They said they used their hands to sort through the rubble and a ladder to pull people out, with four people being rescued by locals.
One resident said the collapse happened so suddenly that people initially thought there had been a cylinder blast.
“There is so much noise here normally that we did not understand what had happened. First there was a vibration and a sound, like something stuck in a mixer. I thought a cylinder had burst. Then we saw the building had come down,” the resident said.
For the families sitting outside the adjoining houses, however, the immediate wait was for something far more basic — water, a place to sleep, and permission to retrieve what little remained inside their homes.
