Kolkata: Two minutes saved Faruque Mondal from getting buried under tonnes of concrete and steel on Wednesday.Mondal, 30, a labourer from Basanti in the Sundarbans, had just stepped out of the under-construction warehouse in Taratala with fellow worker Vijay Yadav to carry a stack of iron bars when the structure behind them collapsed.“I had just stepped out with Vijay when we heard a loud thud. We turned around and saw the entire warehouse collapse behind us,” Mondal recalled, still shaken by the event. “A thick cloud of dust engulfed everything. We couldn’t see anything and ducked for cover. For a few moments, we just lay there in shock.”Then came the cries from beneath the rubble. “Someone trapped inside started screaming. That’s when I ran back towards the debris,” he said.Mondal, who had joined work at the site only 10 days ago, said he felt extraordinarily lucky to have survived. But the relief was quickly replaced by helplessness.“I could hear workers crying for help from under the collapsed building, but I had no idea how to rescue them. I felt helpless. All I could do was run outside and call for help.”As rescue teams from the Army, NDRF, fire services and Kolkata Police worked through the day to pull survivors out of the wreckage, Mondal remained near the temporary workers’ shelter, waiting for news of his close friend Khalek Sardar, who was untraceable until late Wednesday.The uncertainty left him devastated. “Just last night, Khalek and I spoke to his son over a video call,” Mondal said, breaking down. “He was excited because he was supposed to return to his home in Hanskhali this weekend for his son’s birthday.”Since morning, Khalek’s wife had been calling Mondal repeatedly for updates. “She keeps asking me about him. I don’t know what to tell her,” he said, sitting on the floor of the makeshift shelter beside sacks of rice and vegetables meant for the workers. “What answer do I have?”Across the site, accounts of narrow escapes were mixed with anguish for those still missing. Santosh Mahato, another worker, was sitting on a concrete slab outside the site, trying to come to terms with how close he had come to death. He left the site for a tea and cigarette break barely 10 minutes before the collapse. “Had I been inside, I would probably have met the same fate as many of my fellow workers,” Mahato said.His relief soon gave way to panic as he tried to reach colleagues who were inside the structure when it fell. “I kept calling some of them, but their phones weren’t connecting. From the debris, I could hear voices crying for help,” he said.Mahato said he had been hired for the project by contractor Azgar Hossain, who also remained unreachable for hours after the collapse.
