August 2nd 2023.
Thane: On Monday evening, 37-year-old Premprakash Yadav left his workers’ quarters to head to the Sarlambe Village construction site of Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway. He had worked at the site for almost a year, and as was routine, he briefed the workers on their tasks for the graveyard shift.
Yadav and the team of 28 people, comprising of workers and engineers, arrived at Sarlambe to move a girder launching gantry, in order to place the girder the next day. As the automatic launching machine started to move, the pleasant monsoon breeze made the arduous task more bearable. It normally took a few minutes to move the specialised launcher, which weighed 700 metric tonnes, by an inch.
Everything seemed normal as the clock kept ticking, and the team were experienced enough to do the engineering task. However, at 11.30pm, the 700 tonner came crashing down from a height of 35 metres.
Yadav was trapped. A portion of the launching crane had trapped him and the pain was unbearable. He went into shock and, through the little consciousness he had, he noticed that some unknown people had gathered at the site. The villagers had been rudely woken up from their sleep and were the first responders to the incident.
"Me and 27 others were working on the girder launching machine for preparatory work," Yadav said. "After the incident, I was unable to see my colleagues. Some of the villagers removed me from the mangled remains that had trapped me and put me in their vehicle so that I could get medical care at a nearby hospital in Shahapur."
Later, Yadav was moved to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Hospital in Kalwa from the rural hospital at Shahapur. He received monetary support from the union, due to the accident. Yadav also mentioned that, in the last one year, with the same set of team members, not even a minor incident had occurred.
The conversation was interrupted with a phone call from his family members, who were hundreds of kilometres away in Uttar Pradesh. His father had advice for him: "Once you recuperate, please return home. Don’t work at a place where people play with your life." In response, Yadav said, "One of my legs is numb."
In light of the incident, Taloja industrial estate organised a workshop on accident prevention. This was done to help increase awareness on the importance of safety precautions in the workplace.
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