Tiruvallur: Eleven persons, including a three-year-old child, died and one person was injured after a section of a 17-foot-high compound wall of a private warehouse collapsed on their settlements in Alamathy village, Tiruvallur district, on Sunday.
This comes barely a week after the under construction, 11-storey building collapsed in Porur, Chennai, claiming 61 lives.
The deceased in Saturday night’s wall collapse were mostly construction labourers from Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. They got trapped under the rubble for several hours till a passerby on Sunday morning saw the collapsed wall and informed the village panchayat leaders.
The local police and rescue service personnel were informed and they reached the spot quickly and began rescue operations. The Sholavaram police arrested Balu, the owner of the premises, Devendran, the mason who employed the labourers, and site engineer Murugesan on Sunday, Tiruvallur SP A. Saravanan said.
The labourers were working on the construction of another godown nearby and had raised settlements against the compound wall of the site, police personnel said.
Nine of the deceased are from Srikakulam district, Andhra Pradesh — Pentayya, 45, Lakshmi Kantha, 35, her husband, Simmayya, 40, and their three-year-old son, Jagadeesh, Lakshmi, 40, Jeyammal, 65, Simhadri, 40, Ramu, 19, and Kondayya, 58. Ajith Mandal and Leena Mandal are from Odisha, the district authorities said. Nagaraj, the 19-year-old son of Pentayya, the lone survivor, is being treated at the government Stanley hospital in Chennai.
The locals said heavy rains that lashed the area could have led to the wall collapse.
