Two killed as hotel building collapses

Over a dozen people sustain injuries

DIJKOT:

A two-storey hotel building at Lari Adda on Sargodha Road collapsed due to heavy rain, killing two people on the spot and injuring over a dozen others.

The deceased were identified as Ashfaq Ahmed, 42, and Imran.

Besides the deceased, over a dozen people remained buried under the debris of the building until help arrived.

The district emergency officer of Rescue 1122 supervised the rescue operation.

As soon as it was reported to the police about the collapse of the hotel building, Lyallpur Town SP, Civil Line and Kotwali DSPs besides the District Emergency Officer, Ehtsham Wahla, Emergency Officer Ghulam Shabbir and Rescue Safety Officer Muhammad Shahid arrived on the spot and helped the trapped people to safety.

However, two of them had already died before the help arrived.

In other incidents, 50-year-old Rani Bibi and her 25-year-old daughter Safina Abdul Aziz were injured when the dilapidated roof of their house collapsed due to rain in Chack No. 189 RB.

Several other people were injured in similar incidents across the district.

On Thursday, at least six people died and eight others were injured in two incidents of roof collapse and two road traffic crashes amid heavy rain that lashed the provincial capital for over seven hours.

According to officials, two men sitting on a charpoy at a rickshaw workshop at Daroghawala Chowk to shelter themselves from rain died and two others were injured when the mud roof collapsed.

One of the victims had stopped at the place minutes before the incident. People present nearby rushed to help them and called rescue teams. They removed the debris and evacuated the victims.

One of the men had died on the spot, while another was shifted to hospital but he succumbed to injuries. The deceased were identified as Azeem Hafeez, 44, from Mughalpura, and Fiaz Sattar, 45, from Fategarh.

Police handed over the bodies to the families after completing legal formalities. In the other incident, the roof of a house in a dilapidated condition collapsed in Salamatpura, leaving one person dead and another injured.

Rescue 1122 received a call at its control room about the roof collapse in Mohallah Eid Gah.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2022.