Kolkata: A 19-year-old worker, who called his family for help while he was trapped under the debris of the collapsed warehouse in Taratala, has died. The death toll in the accident has now risen to 16.Mannu Kumar, a migrant worker from Munger in Bihar, died late on Thursday night at SSKM Hospital. He had been rescued after teams traced his mobile phone signal.Kumar was one of six family members working at the Transport Depot Road site when the multi-storey commercial building collapsed around noon on Wednesday. Three of his relatives were rescued early. One relative was found dead on the first day. Kumar and another relative, Shirchand Kumar, are still missing under steel and concrete.Around 1.30 am on Wednesday, Kumar’s phone briefly caught a weak network signal from inside a basement space. He made a short, desperate call to a relative, Santosh, asking for help before the call got disconnected abruptly. He could not send his location, but the call helped emergency teams trace his mobile tower data. The Army deployed its advanced rescue radar system to detect movement and locate possible voids inside the debris and wreckage.“While remaining trapped under the debris, Mannu had dialled one of his friends Sushil Kumar in Munger. He struggled to come out but he could not survive the injuries,” one of his relatives said at the hospital.Rescue teams used life-detection radar and vertical drilling machines provided by the Army and the National Disaster Response Force. They found Mannu’s location and pulled him out of the rubble around 6 am on Thursday, after nearly 14 hours. His 17-year-old relative, Ghee Kumar, who was trapped beside him, was found dead.Mannu was taken to SSKM Hospital and had emergency surgery, but he succumbed to his injuries around 11 pm. Three other family members are still in the hospital in critical condition. One relative is still missing.
