Times of
India: Mumbai: Sunday, September 08, 2019.
There
were almost 10,000 disaster-related complaints in the city since January,
according to a reply to a Right to Information (RTI) query. It revealed that
137 lives were lost, while 579 people were injured in tree crashes, fires, road
accidents, short-circuits, house collapses and drownings. The data was given in
reply to a query filed by Shakeel Ahmed Shaikh, of Adhikar Foundation NGO.
BMC
officials said not all calls were genuine but they recorded all at the disaster
control room. Most calls (3,364) were received for tree crashes, followed by
3,032 for fires.
One
of the major tragedies in which over 30 lost this lives this year was in Malad,
when following extremely heavy rainfall on the night of July 1-2, a retaining
wall had crashed, releasing a torrent of water into shanties at Pimpripada and
Ambedkar Nagar.
There
were 1,300 complaints pertaining to water-logging and civic officials said most
have been on heavy rain days. There were also 39 complaints of people falling
in gutters and nallahs, while 25 pertained to landslides.
On
July 10, 18-month-old Divyansh Singh fell into an open drain at Goregaon's
Veerbhatti Ambedkar Chowk. Locals had claimed that the drain was not covered
but the civic body said there were cement lids. The body was not found despite
several days of a search operation by BMC's fire brigade department, NDRF and
police. There were also 65 complaints of potholes.