The three-storeyed building collapses in Uttarkashi on Sunday. (AP)

New Delhi, June 18: The huge structure wobbled. Then the three floors folded, one on top of the other, as the rain-loosened soil finally slid away underneath.

Casino Royale? No, this was real. And there was no Bond watching his girl Vesper Lynd sinking in a falling heap of concrete but a local reporter in Uttarakhand who had positioned his video camera, knowing it would make “great footage”.

“I have not watched such a scene in any movie,” Devender Rawat said as he recalled how the building in Joshiara village, Uttarkashi, collapsed on Sunday after rain-fed floodwaters turned the soil into slush.

To those who have watched Casino Royale, the collapse might bring back memories of the climax in Venice in the 2006 Hollywood blockbuster — a huge building surrounded by water and Bond (Daniel Craig) trying to save Vesper (Eva Green) who locks herself in an iron-frame lift and allows herself to sink as the concrete structure crumbles like a pack of cards.

That was reel. Sunday’s footage was real. It has emerged as the defining image of the disaster after news channels picked it up and played it, over and over again.

“The apartment complex used to stand just opposite my home. By Saturday evening, as floodwaters started swelling and started cutting the ground underneath, it was clear the structure would come crashing down. So around 150 people living in the building vacated it, leaving most of their belongings inside,” Rawat said.

“As I saw signs of the (imminent) collapse on Sunday morning, I positioned my video camera towards the structure on my rooftop and stood there shooting for several hours even as it kept pouring. I knew it would make great footage.”

An official at a news agency, which picked up the footage and fed it to several channels, said when he first saw the footage he was sure it would grab eyeballs.

The state correspondent of a leading news channel in Dehradun said he had received the clip from three or four sources on Sunday. “Whenever disasters like this happen, we get clips showing different facets of the tragedy. But this particular video, which was shot by a local correspondent living in the same area, caught our attention.”

Hundreds of thousands of Netizens have already watched the footage captured by Rawat on YouTube.