The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Digging by Water Board led to collapse of scaffolding?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 10, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Digging by Water Board led to collapse of scaffolding?

K. Srinivas Reddy

Trenches dug up to 3 metres along flyover: Gammon India

PHOTO: P. V. Sivakumar

SAFETY CONCERNS: The spans of the Punjagutta flyover under construction that collapsed on Sunday after heavy rain.

HYDERABAD: Was digging to lay a 600 diameter pipeline, by the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Works and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB), the reason for Sunday’s flyover mishap?

Officials of Gammon India Limited believe that digging for laying the water pipeline and torrential rain could have led to the collapse of the scaffolding of the flyover under construction at Punjagutta junction.

Gammon India General Manager K. Jayachandran explained that HMWSSB dug up trenches up to three metres deep along the flyover under construction from the Nagarjuna junction till Somajiguda and filled it up just a few days before they had put up the iron scaffoldings.

Objection

“We had objected to the digging because such work adjacent to the flyover would loosen the soil,” maintained Mr. Jayachandran.

He claimed that the authorities had overruled Gammon India’s objection stating that the drinking water pipe laying work was very urgent.

It was on this ‘dug-up-and-closed’ stretch, Gammon India had erected the ‘trussels’ or ‘cribs’ or scaffoldings on which the pre-fabricated concrete segments are placed. The six centimetres of rain could have loosed the soil near the pipeline work leading to the ‘caving in’ of the soil.

“Heavy rain and water logging worsened the situation,” said Mr. Jayachandran. Terming the incident as “unfortunate”, Mr. Jayanchandran pointed out that Gammon India had constructed many such flyovers in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.

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