Eyewitnesses ‘can’t believe it happened’

At 11.30 pm on Tuesday, after watching a movie on his phone, Surjit Kumar (23), a mechanic, happened to walk to the window facing the Mumbai-Goa bridge while talking to his relative on the phone. What he saw left the young man traumatised. “I thought I was seeing things. I heard a loud noise like thunder and felt vibrations. I saw two headlights of a big vehicle falling towards the river. When I couldn’t see the lights anymore, I realised that two buses had fallen into the Savitri river one after the other,”he said.

Mr Kumar still seemed jumpy on Wednesday, as he was startled when a gust of wind tipped over a steel tumbler in the very room where he had witnessed the accident. “I still can’t believe it happened,”he said, gazing outside the window.

Mr Kumar works and lives with six others at the Shiv Kripa garage, a two-storey building perched on the edge of the hill from where the bridge can be seen.

After witnessing the disaster, Mr Kumar woke up his colleagues and his maternal uncle Basant Kumar (33). “When he said the bridge had collapsed, we didn’t believe him. We ran to the window only to see what looked a like a four-wheeler plunge into the river. It was like something you’d see in a movie,”said Basant Kumar.

The men than ran down to the site to alert vehicles about the incident. Both uncle and nephew said they were unsure about whether or not more vehicles had fallen off the bridge.

Another eyewitness who works for ‘Privi’, a local firm, has refused to speak to the media and is still under shock, claims the company’s general manager, Mr Pathare, who himself was assisting rescue operation from the bridge.