2 children among three dead as Visakhapatnam apartment collapses

Visakhapatnam: Two children and an adult were crushed to death when a three-storeyed residential building collapsed in the small hours of Thursday in Visakhapatnam, a police official said.

At the time of the collapse, eight tenants from three families living on three floors were present in the building. Two of them were children, and both died.

“Suddenly at 1.30 in the morning, the whole structure collapsed,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Sumit Sunil Garud said, sharing the preliminary information said. “Police and fire services responded immediately and with quick action we could rescue five of them.”

Had the police and fire services not attended to the emergency immediately, Garud said, more occupants of the building would have died.

The IPS officer, who spent two hours at the accident site, oversaw the rescue of a woman. Five rescued tenants are undergoing treatment in hospital.

Meanwhile, police booked a case under Section 174 of CrPC (police must enquire and report on the circumstances of death) and are in the process of taking an expert opinion to ascertain the cause of the old building’s collapse.

According to Garud, another building is also being constructed beside the collapsed one.