MUMBAI: Ten people had a lucky escape, sustaining minor injuries, when the boom of a 250-tonne hydraulic crane toppled and crashed onto their homes at Qureshi Nagar in Kurla before dawn on Friday. Residents said they were woken at 2.40am by what sounded like an explosion as the crane tilted and then plunged, smashing slum tenements, a compound wall and two-wheelers. Its boom, around 80 feet long, also brought down high-tension railway overhead wires, which helped break its fall and limit the damage.
For Nazim Shaikh, 43, a biscuit and khari vendor, the accident couldn’t have been more ill-timed. Both he and his wife Aarti, 30 took a few stitches to their heads, while their 13-year-old son escaped with scratches. He is relieved his younger children, Ayush, 9, and Pari, 3, escaped with minor scratches.
I thought I had almost lost my entire family and my blood ran cold. It took nine hours for a crew armed with blow torches and gas cutters to slice through the fallen boom, to clear it away. The ten injured residents were treated at two civic hospitals. It came barely two days before his daughter’s wedding. The Sheikh family had just finished celebrating the haldi ceremony and had turned in for the night when the accident occurred. “I had stepped out when I saw, to my horror, the boom crash down on my home. But, soon, voices came out of the rubble and neighbours began pulling my family members out,” recalls Sheikh, whose modest home was still draped in overhead wires late onFriday evening.
On Friday evening, he was staring at the wreckage of his home, while a carrom board, mosquito bat and other items lay exposed to the elements.
