AIZAWL: Four more bodies were extricated on Thursday from the debris of the partially built 100-metre-tall rail bridge in Mizoram whose girder collapsed the previous day, taking the number of victims found to 22.
Officials said the death toll, initially estimated to be at least 23, could exceed that number as the prospects of finding some missing workers alive dimmed by the close of the second day’s search.
The Mizoram State Disaster Response Force and a quick-response team had scoured the area, backed by the local volunteers, from dawn till dusk.
All the identified casualties in the bridge collapse were migrant workers from West Bengal’s Malda district, including six members of a family and an 18-year-old school dropout who joined his two uncles there in the hope of being able to fund his ailing father’s treatment and younger siblings’ education.
Northeast Frontier Railway had contracted Kolkata-headquartered ABCI Infrastructures Pvt Ltd to build the bridge near Sairang, the last railhead in the northeastern hill state, as part of a 51.3km route originating at Bairabi on the Assam-Mizoram border.
The route has been included in a national project to create a rail network linking the capitals of the eight northeastern states.
An official said the company was still to confirm the number of workers deployed at the bridge construction site on Wednesday, when the girder gave in and came crashing down in the vicinity of the Kurung riverbed.
This was the second such tragedy to strike a railway site in the northeast since 50 people died in the landslide that buried the under-construction Tupul railway yard and a Territorial Army post in Manipur’s Noney district on June 30 last year.
Mizoram BJP president Vanlalhmuaka said railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw agreed to visit the accident site after they spoke over the phone.
Officials said the death toll, initially estimated to be at least 23, could exceed that number as the prospects of finding some missing workers alive dimmed by the close of the second day’s search.
The Mizoram State Disaster Response Force and a quick-response team had scoured the area, backed by the local volunteers, from dawn till dusk.
All the identified casualties in the bridge collapse were migrant workers from West Bengal’s Malda district, including six members of a family and an 18-year-old school dropout who joined his two uncles there in the hope of being able to fund his ailing father’s treatment and younger siblings’ education.
Northeast Frontier Railway had contracted Kolkata-headquartered ABCI Infrastructures Pvt Ltd to build the bridge near Sairang, the last railhead in the northeastern hill state, as part of a 51.3km route originating at Bairabi on the Assam-Mizoram border.
The route has been included in a national project to create a rail network linking the capitals of the eight northeastern states.
An official said the company was still to confirm the number of workers deployed at the bridge construction site on Wednesday, when the girder gave in and came crashing down in the vicinity of the Kurung riverbed.
This was the second such tragedy to strike a railway site in the northeast since 50 people died in the landslide that buried the under-construction Tupul railway yard and a Territorial Army post in Manipur’s Noney district on June 30 last year.
Mizoram BJP president Vanlalhmuaka said railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw agreed to visit the accident site after they spoke over the phone.