Workers heard cracking noise

Around 8 or 9 a.m. on Thursday as 40-year-old Pranab Das went up the Vivekananda Flyover, he had heard a cracking noise from the “giant nuts of the cantilever.” Mr Das is now in the Orthopedic ward in the second floor of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital with multiple fractures, and can barely speak.

“We were told to start work. The joints were welded and liquid cement was poured,” he told The Hindu . His relative, Biswajit Das, who was also working on the bridge on Thursday morning said he could hear the sound of the “nuts cracking in the joint of the cantilever.”

“About four hours after we heard the sound, the bridge collapsed,” Mr Das said.

The engineers of Kolkata Municipal Corporation at the accident site on Thursday, said it was possible to hear such sound if the joints of the girders were stretched.

“We can now see the impact of the stretch on the bridge as the girders shifted from their place in the existing part of the bridge…may be the workers are referring to the sound when the bridge was moving under stress,” a senior engineer said. The question, which the engineer however, did not answer, is why work was continued even after such a cracking noise was heard.

Murtaza, a thirty-six-year-old lying in the bed next to Mr Das, said his lorry loaded with ginger was still stuck under the bridge.

“In another two minutes I would have come out of the area, when the bridge collapsed,” said Mr Murtaza.