Last moments of twin tower evacuation and a sleeping man

A special task force comprising members of the Emerald Court here had evacuated all residents on time. But hours before the Noida twin towers' demolition, the 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.

Also Read | Explained: The Supertech twin towers case and how it was demolished

Nine years after a residents association went to court over the illegally built Supertech twin towers here, a series of controlled explosions reduced the 100-metre tall structures to a massive pile of rubble.

Apex (32 storeys) and Ceyane (29 storeys) were gone in seconds, in the carefully choreographed and meticulously executed demolition -– the biggest such exercise in the country so far.

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.

The Supertech twin towers in Noida were demolished on Sunday, a year after the Supreme Court's direction to raze the illegally built structures to the ground.

Emerald Court has 15 residential towers, each having 44 apartments and total around 2,500 residents and 1,200 vehicles.

The special task force comprised seven members who are resident of the society.

Also Read | Noida twin towers demolition: Timeline of key events

Besides the STF, the society also had a 'captain' for each of the 15 towers.

By 7 am, almost all of the residents, including children and senior citizens, had vacated the 15 residential premises in a well-coordinated exercise by the society's special task force.

Emerald Court's Gaurav Mehrotra headed the task force team that also had Avinash Rai, Amit Arora, Colonel (retd) Rajesh Kashyap, Wing Commander (retd) Mohit Garg, Anil Saxena besides Naresh Keswani.

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 who appeared to have not vacated!

"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.

Explaining their evacuation strategy, Keswani said the special task force had it brainstormed over a month's time. They came 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, their vehicles over two days without any hassle or causing traffic snarls outside the society roads.