Eight sleeping staffers of the Tamil Nadu’s public transport utility were killed when the roof of a bus depot collapsed on them in the early hours of Friday.

The tragic incident took place in Porayar, a small town in Nagapattinam district.

The casualties were bus drivers and conductors who had finished their trips late Thursday night and were resting inside the bus depot, a pre-Independence building built in 1943.

“There were a total of 11 employees sleeping in the depot when at around 3.30 am the roof of the building collapsed. As it was the Deepavali holiday, there were not many passengers in the depot,” said a police officer.

On hearing the loud noise, local people alerted ambulance and fire services. While three of the 11 employees were rescued alive from the debris, eight others were found dead.

According to sources, the deceased are Prabhakaran, Balu, Chandrasekaran, Dhanapal, Muniyasamy, Ramalingam, Anbarasan and Manivannan.

All of them were either bus drivers or conductors hailing from areas like Tharangambadi and Nagapattinam.