Nearly eighty-year old Mississipi hangar used by the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation as the bus station for City services at City Bus Station collapsed on Thursday morning.
None were injured as the complex was vacated by the RTC officials on June 30 as the structure had become weak and was in danger of collapsing. According to A. Purushotham Naik, Executive Director, Greater Hyderabad Zone, the imposing structure developed cracks on June 29 after big sound was heard.
“We asked all the 20 shop owners to vacate their stalls and stopped movement of all buses from June 30. As we suspected that the structure was in a very precarious condition, we decided that the entire premises should be sealed off. From June 30, there is no movement of buses,” Mr. Purushotham Naik said.
Today between 7 am and 7.30 am, the front portion of the iconic structure collapsed and within minutes the entire complex came down with a huge sound, the senior TSRTC official said adding that major disaster was averted as they had already taken precaution to evict the shopkeepers and stopping movement of city buses.
As soon as the news broke out, in charge TSRTC Managing Director and Principal Secretary Transport Sunil Sharma rushed to the spot. Other senior RTC officials were at the spot taking stock of the situation.
The TSRTC officials said till last week as many as 2,385 trips were made by the city buses passing through the City Bus Station, which was known as Central Bus Station till 1996. Till last week as many as 86 buses used to be parked in the night at the complex.
Popularly known as Gowliguda bus station, it was hub for all the district buses coming from all part of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and neighbouring states. Consequent to the construction of Imlibun bus station on the other side of Musi, the CBS complex was handed over to the city region of the RTC.
The structure was built sometime in the 1930s by Butler & Co of USA for the Nizam’s Road Transport Department.
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