From a Trickle to a Deluge: A Student’s Escape from a Delhi Coaching Centre Library
The Hindu
This was at 7 pm the Saturday evening. One of the victims identified as Anmol Nath, 26, was inside the Rau’s IAS Study Circle Library at the time of the incident, said the police adding that the building has three floors and is located in Old Rajinder Nagar below the ground level. He remembers that period because of the librarian who informed them that the premises was going to close in a few minutes.
What Nath and twenty-odd UPSC aspirants did not know was that due to the rain that had occurred outside, the road was virtually knee-deep into water. However, the latter is exposed to constant pressure, and soon the gate to the academy crumbled. In came the water and it started to flow through the walls and fill up the basement through the rainwater entrance.
Nath said that he was seated close to the door of the library when a security guard run down shouting that water was going to get into the library and we all have to vacate the building.
“Initially it became a trickle of water. All of a sudden it became a flood. The students and I tried to run upstairs, and we got out… But there were 8-9 persons still trapped in the building… some students tried to swim… I tried and gestured to the people to follow me clutching to the piece of cloth and threw the ropes…they did not succeed. It was painful to see…we do not know what
At this time, as stated by the eyewitnesses, two security guards on the second floor cut the switch off to avoid electrocuting and went downstairs to ascertain if there were students stuck in the basement.
In parallel to that, a student asked to go for a walk around the city at 6 p.m. He went back to take his belongings, mostly his tablet and books at around 430 30 pm to find people evacuating the building. “The basement was getting flooded, and people were coming out of the building especially from the first and second floors There was enough water in the basement by then to block the exit he recalled.”
Within 15-20minutes, Fire fighters & four water pumps which was deployed by DFS Chief Atul Garg reached the spot at around 7. 25 pm. Police teams from the Central district had got there by then.
Garg said they began to pump out the water, only for it to well up in the basement all over again. “The water being taken out was not getting drained out and was returning to the basement they said, which made rescue operations a tricky affair,” he said.
Later the divers of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were summoned; they reached at 8. 30 pm. An officer remarked, “The NDRF teams cited problem in identifying the students as books and furniture were floating in the dirty water which hampered visibility; at least four-five divers had to swim around and look for the students in all directions.”
At 10. At 39 PM, the first body, belonging to a woman was pulled out by the DFS and NDRF divers. “The water was about six feet deep at this time max; therefore, the body could be noticed… At 11. 20 pm, the second body, that of a woman was retrieved” a police officer explained.
An ethnic-Coloured student from Next IAS who witnessed the removal of one of the bodies said that the flow of water could not be regulated. “They had been pumping out the water for four hours… police managed to rescue 4-5 students. The NDRF said there were two confirmed deaths, but only one body has been taken out till now,” he said.
Sharing a video clip of the flooding outside the coaching centre on his Instagram account, Garg wrote: “This is why water entered the basement From this, because of the moving vehicles and water thrust, when the main gate was knocked off; all water on the road gushed into the building with very limited time for the students to get out.”
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