Mumbai Building Collapse Kills 66; How Did It Fall?

Authorities in Mumbai said the death toll has risen to 66 in the building collapse that took place Friday. The cause of the five-story-building collapse has been identified as the fault of a decorator who removed a central wall and its supporting beams without receiving proper clearance to perform such a task. Police charged Ashok Kumar Mehta, owner of Mamamiya Decorators, with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, which amounts to unlawful neglect killing. The residential building is home to celerical employees and is owned by Mumbai's city council. There are still dozens missing after the collapse.

Mumbai Mayor Sunil Prabhu said a survey last November concluded that the building was in desperate need of renovation. The city government approved funding for the project in April, but the money has not yet been spent. The building collapsed 6 a.m. Friday and 33 people were removed from the rubble alive. Vijay Khabale Patil, a spokesman for the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai said the city created two panels in response to the collapse. The panels are to assess 56 buildings in the city in need of urgent repair. The panels are expected to submit its findings in 45 days. Those that cannot be salvaged will be demolished, Patil told reporters.

Ramashyra Yadav, joint CEO of Orbit Corp., said that these investigations are faulty and the number of buildings being surveyed are incredibly low. "It's an appallingly low number and is a result of the administration's myopic and faulty methods of assessment," Yadav said. "They just look at the age of building, which is ridiculous. A more rigorous audit that includes quality check is needed." This isn't the first occurrence of a fatal building collapse in the Mumbai region this year. A collapse of an illegal multistory building in Thane killed dozens of people in April. Housing rights groups allege that old buildings in the neighborhood are sorely neglected, while new ones are built with shoddy materials.