Three persons were injured when a portion of the parapet in a house on Moore Avenue in Tollygunge collapsed on Tuesday, officials of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said.
Though the condition of the two-storey building was “good”, engineers suspect the parapet could have developed cracks and the condition worsened with rain.
The parapet fell on a corrugated roof built over a balcony on the floor below the terrace. The shade broke and fell on people standing or sitting under it.
A police report identified the injured as Barun Nandi, 82, his wife Arati Nandi, 76, and Pradip Nandi, 65.
Debashis Nandi, son of Barun and Arati, said his mother “suffered six fractures on her left leg”.
“My father suffered minor injuries,” he said.
Pradip, who is Debashis’ cousin, fractured his waist and was administered six stitches on his head.
“This building does not feature on our list of ‘dangerous’ buildings, but it could have been that the parapet had some cracks and was not in a good condition,” said a senior engineer of the KMC.
The injuries turned the focus back on hundreds of dilapidated and crumbling buildings in Kolkata. Every monsoon, many such buildings collapse leading to injuries and in some cases death.
The KMC has identified and pulled down portions of about 100 such buildings which were identified as “too dangerous”.
The KMC has a list of about 2,500 “dangerous buildings”. “The number is dynamic as some buildings go out of the list after being pulled down or repaired and some are added after fresh inspections,” an official of the civic body said.
Most such buildings are located in north and central Kolkata. In south Kolkata, there are a few such buildings in the Kalighat-Bhowanipore area.
Many factors are responsible for the dangerous state of such buildings. “Most of these buildings are decades old and some are even older. There are multiple owners who are engaged in legal battles with each other. Besides, each of these buildings has multiple tenants who pay a meagre amount as rent. The owners complain that it is impossible to repair the structures with the paltry amount they get from their tenants,” said a KMC official.
The KMC Building Rules were amended over the last few years to make it easier to pull down such crumbling structures and construct new buildings in their place.
According to the amended building rules, the KMC allows the construction of additional space — which was not permitted on a plot of that size and with a similar road width surrounding it — that the owners can sell and recover the cost of construction.
The owners have to submit no-objection certificates from tenants when they apply for new construction, said an official. “The tenants are entitled to space in the new building,” a KMC official said.
These provisions have been added to the Building Rules so that owners and tenants have some reasons to agree to pull down the crumbling structure.
The KMC Act also empowers the municipal commissioner to forcefully evict people from a building if the civic authorities deem the structure unfit for living, said an official.