Safety first, but do people care?
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The tragic fall of a boy at a shopping mall and of a girl at her school have once again turned the focus on safety measures in buildings. Uday Garudachar, of Garuda Mall, brings in his views on this crucial issue in a conversation with
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— Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash
NEW LOOK: The Garuda Mall atrium now has a safety net.
Malls and schools are surely in the news, albeit for the wrong reasons. They are caught up in a debate about their raison d’être. How safe are the new generation shopping-and-entertainment-complexes and knowledge institutions?
If the Garuda Mall incident had the six-year-old Ahan Bhandari — playing around the escalator plate and watching the promotional event at the ground floor atrium from the fourth floor — slipping through the railings for a 50 ft. fall, five-year-old Sonia Singh did not survive her crash from the first floor of the Vasavi Vidyaniketan School in Visveswarapuram. Malls attract thousands of visitors everyday while growing children spend at least six hours a day in school.
The fact remains that all these buildings were supposed to have been given the green signal for occupation along with standard certifications from the Government departments concerned. Post unfortunate incidents, isn’t it futile to argue that the building had violated norms? Who is held responsible or made accountable at the end of the day? The officials who clear the design and the building for safe public movement? The NOCs from Government agencies that clear an educational institution for accommodating little children, the building owners who deviate from the stipulated laws, the inspecting agencies failing to have a hawk’s eye on divergences, the careless attitude of elders who turn a blind eye to impending dangers for children in public places?
Anyway you look at it, the Catch-22 kind of situation and the irony of non-accountability in building laws have left people to sheepishly accept the state of affairs as something beyond redemption. “Just our fate to blame,” said a resigned bookstore visitor on M.G. Road recently who had incidentally hurt her knee after a slip on the over-smooth dazzling floor tiles at the shop.
Garuda Mall has been a happening place for event promotions and several festivals that highlight the culture of the State. It is needless to say that the “shopatainment” area brings in people-traffic of a humungous order from the time it was thrown open to the public in 2005. When this reporter entered the mall on Tuesday, the huge net spread across the atrium above the ground floor for fall safety and big boards in several places pleading elders to take care of their kids were visible. Additional security guards are posted at vantage points and the railings are seen reaching your chest in every floor.
PropertyPlus
thought it appropriate to speak to Uday Garudachar, Managing Director, Garuda Mall, to get his point of view on the events that led to the accident (as he shows the shots of the incident captured by the mall cameras) and the desi
gn of the mall that has been the cynosure of all eyes and the movie and TV cameras.
The entire episode is rather unfortunate…
Nobody can enter into the gap of the plate of the escalator provided for maintenance purposes. Ahan is seen playing near the area with his brother and prying intermittently at the event happening down at the atrium. Soon he is caught at the moving railings and gets pushed down automatically. One minute he is seen playing and the other minute he is down. How can anyone help during such accidents?
Can you see how some others at the same area are seen treating railings as play-area slides? How responsible are these acts, let alone the space design around the escalator which has become a topic of discussion today?
At 15.28 Ahan is seen still playing, at 15.29 he falls down, and our guards are already in the auto carrying a bleeding child at 15.32 to the hospital. Why isn’t anyone talking of our efficient guards and the alert, focussed service? Our cameras have captured them all.
A helpless situation
It is unfortunate that anyone should lose their child in such traumatic circumstances. Everybody was left shattered and helpless. The building, which has taken shape with my passion, is meant to entertain masses, not hurt them.
Everybody who is connected to it has to be responsible, even the visitors entering the building.
I am reminded of the Sanskrit saying, ‘Putrashoko Nirantaraha’ which means the loss of one’s child is lifelong. It is a very difficult situation.
The Corporation, which is my partner in the mall enterprise, owns 40 per cent of this property. They sure would have been over-careful while sanctioning licences. At the time of obtaining NOCs from various departments… electrical, fire, town-planning, public works, health etc., the National Building Code and Bureau of Indian Standards norms were adhered to.
The escalator railing height is 740 mm, higher than the stipulated BIS code which follows the Chinese model. But I raised it as Indians are slightly taller.
The Garuda Fest has people swarming all the six floors, but nothing untoward took place all these years.
Architectural features
The escalators that come in with SKD features, its flight and landing, everything is in place.
Our architects are the reputed ‘Sundaram and Sundaram’ who had senior architects in the team personally inspecting the work when the building was getting ready. Mr. Sundaram is a structural engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
We have taken bits and pieces from shopping centres across the world for the interiors.
Low emission glass, natural landscape, water body make the exteriors while each shop enjoys exclusive space internally with diffused lighting and spacious common areas.
The dynamics of modern shopping are taken care of with the central atrium skylight throwing light on the granite.
The multi-level car park is integrated with the main shopping arcade. Palike, Gyanapeeta, Chandragiri, Indragiri are names that feature here for propagating Karnataka’s culture.
If anybody can come to the mall and find some safety feature missing, he can advise me, and I will incorporate it. Specifications and standards are set for a particular country and nobody needs to compare our features to that of Singapore, South Africa or the U.S.
The Indian standards will be adhered to. We adhere to ‘The Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act’ that is the Municipality Act, the Corporation bye-law.
Additional safety features at the mall
Dr. Subramaniam of the BBMP sent representatives to see what our cameras had captured.
As it was an accident we were asked to add extra features such as raising the railing height by 10 inches, bringing in a safety net above the atrium.
The Joint Commissioner of East Zone, Nagaraj, said boards advising elders not to leave their children unattended should be installed and that was also taken care of. This has cost me Rs. 25 lakh till now. But one hour after the incident I saw careless people seeing children climbing and enjoying on a down-coming escalator. So much for public conscience!
We have positioned 16 extra guards and totally we have 136 guards working in shifts now. The safety net which can withstand even a 300-kg fall (generally seen only in circus or construction sites, not in aesthetic mall-atriums) is already put up, as the government authorities insisted on it. But since the net will block the view of the atrium, I plan to install the transparent Kevlar net from the U.S. and that will cost me Rs. 25 lakh, which is worth it.
The Corporation is contemplating bringing in a law that every mall with atriums must have a safety net. But across the world malls have no nets like this, but if the Indian conditions demand, I will adhere to them.
Safety comes first at Namma Mall, as people refer to it.
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