Bengaluru blast leaves homes flattened and lives fractured

Time of India

14 hours ago

Bengaluru: If not for the public holiday, the number of injuries in Friday morning's blast at Chinnayanapalya might have been far fewer. Residents say many of those injured or left homeless are daily wage workers who usually step out by 7am.
But with the day off, most stayed indoors — a coincidence that turned fatal for one.
"It was around 8am, and I was tying flowers right outside my house. Suddenly, I heard a loud noise, so loud I couldn't hear anything else for the next few minutes," said 68-year-old Ratnamma, who lives just metres from the blast site.
Her granddaughter Megha, visiting from her village with her infant, had been asleep inside. Ratnamma rushed inside to find them shivering.
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"...The house is completely shattered now," Ratnamma said, while Megha added, "If I were in the kitchen at the time, we would have been injured. I'm relieved nothing happened to the baby."
The scene is one of tightly packed homes ripped apart. About 12 sheet-roof dwellings stand broken in the shadows of larger buildings. Four or five have been flattened by the collapse of walls of the house where the blast occurred. Others have lost sections of walls, their doors and windows blown away.
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In this small cheek-by-jowl settlement, homes are built without space between them, leaving no buffer when a disaster strikes.
Lakshmaiah R, a taxi driver, whose building stands next to the destroyed houses, said his family and tenants escaped with only minor property damage. "I had just gone to bed at 5am after three days of continuous work. The blast woke me up. I could see my neighbours' houses collapsing. This is the first time in 70 years that anything like this has happened here.
We didn't have setback area rules when these houses were built," he said.
The shockwave was felt hundreds of metres away. A resident of Shamanna Garden, about 500 metres from the site, said: "I was getting my daughter ready for school when we heard it. The fan and the TV set shook. I've heard the noise from Metro work before, but this was many times louder."
Some survived by sheer chance. Subramani, a 62-year-old plumber, had just stepped out to take a shower when the blast occurred.
His son said, "My mother had gone to work at 7.30am. My father just stepped out. That saved him. He got a small head injury, but the house is gone." Subramani's home stood just behind the one where the explosion took place.
The blast left about 60 people homeless and claimed the life of 8-year-old Mubarak. The house at the centre of the explosion was rented by Aiyappan and Kasturi, a couple from Kallakurichi, Tamil Nadu. "They are financially weak; the man works in construction, which is why I rented the place to them," said the property owner.
By late morning, senior police officers arrived at the site. Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh spoke to the residents, many still in shock. "All we heard was a loud noise; we rushed out. I don't know anything else, sir," Rajeshwari, whose house was damaged, told him.
Property owners who lived elsewhere hurried to the site, only to be kept at a distance while police secured the area. "I've been told it's all debris now. The people here are very poor. I hope everyone is safe," said Vajramma, who owns one of the affected houses.
As evening fell, rescue workers, alongside police and civic workers, sifted through the remains . For many, the holiday that was meant to offer rest instead brought losses, injuries, and the uncertainty of starting over.
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