A sudden cave-in created a 50-feet-deep crater at underground fire-hit Kantapahari colony near BCCL's Angarpathra Colliery of Katras, 21km from Dhanbad district headquarters, early on Wednesday endangering the lives of 50 families.
The cave-in occurred barely 500 metre from the Kantapahari power sub-station of the colliery at 6am, but local BCCL officials were able to reach the site at 11am and begin filling up the crater using an earthmover.
BCCL Katras area GM J.C. Mullick said the area had been declared a danger zone for long. "We have sent our team to the site to fill up the crater with mines overburden. We are also taking steps to shift the 50 families living there with the help of Jharia Rehabilitation and Development Authority (JRDA), " he said.
Local councillor Chotu Singh, who also rushed to the area after getting to know of the cave-in, held the BCCL administration responsible for the incident. "The BCCL should have taken proper precautions in the area to prevent such incidents," he said.
Ramesh Vishswakarma, a daily wage earner and resident of Kantapahari locality, said, "We woke up at 6am to the sound of a big bang. We saw that 500 metre away, a portion of the marshland had caved in assuming the form of a huge crater."
Rickshaw puller Muddasar Ansari said they knew the area was fire-affected and, therefore, subsidence prone, but they never expected such a huge crater to form. "We can't leave the area immediately because we have no alternative housing arrangement," he rued.
Murli Paswan, a carpenter living in the colony, said he had often noticed smoke billowing out of some areas of the locality due to the fire raging beneath the surface of the soil. "But incidents of subsidence never took place in our colony before, although it is a regular feature in the Lilten Angarpathra locality close to the Dhanbad-Chandrapura railway line about a kilometre away," he explained.
The Lilten Angarpathra area developed cracks and saw gas emission on January 7, 2014, about a kilometre away from the Kantapahari area after which as many as 19 families were rendered homeless. The local residents were provided temporary shelter at the Gazlitland community health centre and were later provided houses at Belgarhia.
