Twin Towers Demolition: Man oversleeps in nearby apartment after missing deadline, evacuated before explosion

Hours before the Noida Supertech twin towers' demolition on Sunday, a core team in charge of the exercise went into a tizzy after an alert guard raised an alarm on finding a man sleeping in his apartment beyond the evacuation deadline.

Acting fast, the security guards managed to wake the man on time and evacuated him. The residents of the society, where the illegal twin towers were also located, had started moving out from Friday itself. Those who had to leave Noida left earlier while those planning to accommodate themselves in nearby locations waited till Sunday morning.

Here's what happened

By 7 am Sunday, almost all of the residents had vacated the 15 residential premises in a well-coordinated exercise by the society's special task force headed by Emerald Court's Gaurav Mehrotra.

But a little after 7 am, a security guard raised alarm to the special task force about a person being inside a top floor apartment of a tower.

"We got to know about it because of our double verification process for evacuation. It turned out that of all residents of the towers, one had not left. This resident, it turned out was fast asleep inside apartment and totally missed the evacuation deadline," Naresh Keswani, a member of the special task force, told PTI.

"Somehow, the security guards managed to wake him up and he was also evacuated at just around 7 am," Keswani said.

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Double verification process

Explaining their evacuation strategy, Keswani said the special task force had come up with a double verification process. A sticker with all evacuation-related guidelines was to be pasted by every flat resident once they had locked their homes and left.

Then there was also a register of residents' details with the tower captains, who did the second round of verification to check how many people have left and how many were yet to evacuate.

"It was because of this double step verification that this sleeping resident was identified in time and safely moved out," Keswani said.

The task force also heaped praises on their private security guards who rose to the occasion to ensure smooth evacuation of the residents and their vehicles over two days without any hassle or causing traffic snarls outside the society roads.

(With inputs from PTI)