Making Hyderabad’s vertical boom safer
A seven-storey unauthorized building collapsed in Gachibowli, Hyderabad, resulting in two fatalities and significant damage to the surrounding neighborhood. The incident has raised urgent concerns regarding building safety and regulatory oversight in the city's rapidly expanding vertical landscape.
Why it matters
It highlights the dangers of unregulated urban construction and the human cost of failing to enforce building codes.
For the first few seconds, residents of Jayabheri Residency in Anjaiah Nagar could not make sense of the deafening sound. When they rushed downstairs, they found smoke and mud around the apartment complex. Only then did they realise what had happened: the seven-storey building under construction on the other side of their boundary wall had collapsed.
“In the next few hours, all we could hear were sirens. Government vehicles arrived one after another,” recalls Sujata, a 52-year-old resident of Block C of the apartment complex in Hyderabad’s Gachibowli.
For Rakesh, an IT employee in his early 30s, the building that collapsed on August 22 had long been part of the neighbourhood’s landscape. “I have been living in Jayabheri Residency since February. I used to regularly see that building taking shape from our parking lot,” he says.
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