70-year-old woman dies after two-storey house collapses in Loni

The house first tilted to one side and later came crashing down in the heavy rain on Saturday morning.

A 70-year-old woman was killed after a two-storey house collapsed in Vijay Vihar locality of Loni town Saturday morning.

Kaushalya Devi and her family had rented the two-storey house in Ghaziabad from a Delhi man, Manoj Chaudhary. (SAKIB ALI/HT PHOTO)

According to police, the woman was trapped inside and died later at the GTB Hospital in Delhi. The family said the house first tilted to one side and later came crashing down in the heavy rain on Saturday morning.

The police identified the woman as Kaushalya Devi — she was on the first floor while the other members of her family rushed outside when the plaster started peeling off around 11am.

“I was on the first floor and saw that the plaster of the walls had started crumbling. I immediately asked my family to vacate the house and ran out to see what had happened. In the meantime, one of my three children and my wife along with three of our employees had come out to the streets,” Suresh Kumar, Kaushalya Devi’s son and the tenant of the building, said.

“I saw the entire building had tilted to one side. Within minutes, the entire building collapsed. My mother could not come out in time. Since we all were out of the house and the building started to collapse, none of us could go to the first floor to rescue my mother. She sustained injuries and was rushed to a hospital where she succumbed to injuries. One of my employees suffered minor injuries,” he said.

The officials said the house collapsed due to several hours of heavy rain that lashed Loni on Saturday morning.

“Initially, we received information that several persons of the family and workers were trapped in the debris. We rushed there and residents of the area also helped in the rescue operation. The elderly woman was taken out from under the debris. She was rushed to GTB Hospital where she was declared dead. There were a total of 10 persons inside the building when the incident took place,” Vaibhav Krishna, senior superintendent of police, said.

Apart from locals and the police, the district administration officials also rushed to the spot.