By IANS,
Raipur: Five labourers were killed on the spot and many others injured Saturday in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district as a platform of an under-construction cooling tower of the Korba West Power Company Limited (KWPCL) came crashing down, police said.
About 10 labourers were engaged in construction work of the cooling tower when the accident took place Saturday morning.
“The supporting platform, at a height of 170 feet, on the cooling tower where the labourers were standing collapsed,” Superintendent of Police Anand Chhabra said, adding the workers were trapped under the rubble that spread over a large area near the accident site.
The 600-MW thermal power plant of KWPCL, part of the Avantha (Gautam Thapar) Group, is coming up near Bade Bhandar village, about 20 km from the district headquarters of Raigarh.
Local authorities have launched a rescue work on a war-footing and recovered five bodies from the spot. The search for more bodies, if any, was going on though consistent rain affected the rescue work.
The state government has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident and sought a detailed report from the district administration. The company has announced a compensation of Rs.5 lakh each for the family members of those killed in the incident.