Deepkamal Kaur, Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, April 18. For the National Disaster Response Force team spearheading the rescue operation at the collapsed Shital Fibres building, saving teenager Sanjiv was perhaps the most satisfying job. For, he was brought out from the rubble at 1:20 am today, around 51 hours after being trapped at 11:30 pm on Sunday.
Sanjiv was traced as the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team had been digging from the rear side of the factory.
The team carried along a life-detector machine with six sensors on it, capable of detecting heart beat or any audio wave up to a distance of 500 metres. As soon as the NDRF team made its entry inside the collapsed structure at 5:30 pm last evening,
the life-detector machine beeped and all the JCB machines pulling the debris around the building were stopped.
Two NDRF jawans, Jeet Singh and Sukhvir Singh, were provided with torches and microphones, which they used to trace Sanjiv as per the location details they received from the sensors. “A response came from the other side with the trapped victim claiming he was under machine number 15,” they said. Factory supervisor Piara Singh, who hails from Phagwara, was called in to track the location. Breaching machines equipped with diamond cutters were then deployed to carve out a tunnel to reach out to the boy who was approximately 30 feet away.
“The cutting process took long. We could then see the boy squatting in there through a small hole that became our contact point. He was asking for water. We tied a bottle to an iron rod and passed it on to him through the gap. Then we sent a packet of biscuits and a torch,” narrated NDRF Commandant RK Verma who had been in touch with Ajit and Sukhvir through walkie-talkie sets.
The team used Victim Location Camera and LCD screens to detect three bodies this morning. The bodies were from Bapi Rai (20) of West Bengal, Suresh Singh and Ram Lal Kesri (24), both from Bihar. The Army had been using the cameras with dog squads but as they refused to enter, these were tied to rods and pushed inside to get images. The NDRF has already deployed high-power JCB machines to expedite the rubble-lifting operation.
Rescue teams have been pulling the debris from three sides: front portion, the rear side along the Bist-Doab Canal and the third side where a factory was under construction. As the NDRF and the Army are still hopeful of finding survivors, they are removing iron pillars and girders one by one in a tactical manner.
