Naka house collapse: Families struggle as dreams turn to rubble
Advocate’s elderly mother hospitalised due to shock, decades-old tenants’ laundry business buried under debris as they sleep in the open.
LUCKNOW: The families living in the two houses which collapsed simultaneously in Arya Nagar, Naka Hindola, on Wednesday afternoon are reeling under shock. The 11 members of the two families who don’t have a roof over their heads are struggling to adjust to the unexpected turn of events.
High court lawyer Satendra Dwivedi’s dream of revamping his two-storeyed house came crashing down as his house collapsed . He was renovating his old house built some 60 years ago but little did he know that his life’s savings would turn into debris so unexpectedly.
“We’re living in a rented accommodation for 8-9 months as our renovation work was underway . My cousin’s brother was building his house so we thought of renovating our house as well,” he said. Dwivedi the only bread winner of the family, lived with his elderly parents, wife, six-year-old daughter and unmarried sister.
Dwivedi’s sister Renu Dwivedi, 32, broke into tears and said, “For the renovation, I gave the money which was kept for my wedding, but we lost everything today.”
Mother in shock, hospitalised
Satendra Dwivedi’s elderly parents are in deep shock. “My mother, who is partially blind and a blood pressure patient, is in hospital after crying for the last few days while my father is also handicapped. What will I do if I lose my mother to this tragedy? Where will I go with my family?”
According to the family, they barely knew about the digging as they were living out of the colony and would hardly visit.
Laundry business shut
Meanwhile, the five-member family of Vimla Kannaujia has suddenly found themselves in twin problems after their rented house in Naka Hindola’s Arya Nagar collapsed on Wednesday afternoon .
Not only are they turned homeless, their age-old laundry business has also come to a halt. “We also used to wash and iron clothes in a laundry running in the now collapsed house. With this tragedy, we’ve not only become homeless overnight but also unexpectedly jobless,” she said .
“With nowhere to go, we’re sleeping on the roadside near the collapsed building on a few mattresses which we have been able to extract from the debris,” said Vimla’s 26-year-old son Saurabh Kannauja.
Saurabh, who runs a laundry shop in the house with his elder brother Amit Kannaujia said, “We lost not only our home but a space where we would do our daily activity. We also lost our ironing equipment such as an iron press, tables and a furnace.”
He added, “We’re unable to resume our business as we’re still waiting for the debris to be cleared.”The family of five has been living on the ground floor of the house for decades. “Even though it was a rented house, our two generations have lived here for over five-six decades including my grandfather, father and now I,” said Kannaujia. “I was born here and so it feels like my home,” he said. Likewise for Vimla, the house was never like a rented house but her own abode. “I came to this house approximately over three decades back, being married in the family. I lost my in-laws and my husband here. My children and then my grandson grew up here ,” she explained.
To recall, two buildings, one of which was under construction, collapsed simultaneously in Arya Nagar under Naka police station area here on Wednesday afternoon. Lucknow Development Authority in an inspection found illegal basement digging as the root cause of the collapse.