AT LEAST 70 WOMEN DIE AS PACKED HOUSE COLLAPSES IN LALBAZAR, SRINAGAR
May 4, 1992, 11:30am GMT+5:30
A three-story house collapsed Monday, killing at least 70 women who had gathered for a mourning ceremony for a young woman who died last week, officials said.
At least 100 other people, most of them women, were injured when the house collapsed in the Lalbazaar area of Srinagar, Jammu-Kashmir.
Rescue workers said the wooden floorboards of the building’s top floor broke under the weight of about 200 women who had assembled to participate in the condolence ceremony. The ceremony was intended especially for women, in line with the Muslim custom that women do not sit with men at public gatherings.
The wreckage fell on about 100 more women in the second story and pierced through the floorboards to the ground floor, where a few men were sitting, said chief firefighter Abdul Hameed Dar.
“There were too many people, the top floor just could not bear the load,” Dar said.
About 40 women died in the collapse itself and another 30 died of injuries or suffocation, said doctors at the Soura Medical Institute.
The white and red brick facade of the house was untouched. Inside was a tangle of bloodstained concrete slabs and splintered wooden rafters.
The house belonged to Mirza Ghulam Mohammad, a handicrafts businessman whose 22-year-old daughter, Naseema, died of a brain hemorrhage on Thursday.
The dead woman’s mother was one of those killed in the collapse.