Bellary: With no hopes of finding any
survivor, the nine-day-long rescue operation has been called
off at the site where a five-storeyed under-construction
building collapsed leaving 28 people dead.
"We have stopped the rescue operations completely last
night...it was nothing short of a miracle that a labourer
Mallaiah was extricated alive from the debris yesterday,"
Deputy Commissioner B Shivappa told reporters here.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team which
along with personnel of army`s Military Engineering Service,
Bangalore, had taken up the rescue work in the past nine days,
had returned to Pune, Shivappa said.
The building collapsed on an adjacent students hostel
on January 26 killing eight persons and injuring 19. The toll
mounted to 28 with the rescue teams pulling out more bodies in
the subsequent days.
SP Seemanth Kumar Singh said the inquiry report into
the incident revealed that soil testing was not carried out
properly by the municipal authority and permission was granted
for the construction in violation of the norms.
"Out of the 19 rescued people who were admitted to
Vijaynagar Institute of Medical Sciences hospital, eight have
already been discharged while 10 were still undergoing
treatment," he said.
PTI
