Nearly 60% of the foot overbridge (FOB), named the Himalaya Bridge, outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in Mumbai collapsed on Thursday evening along with the steel cross beams, making it much more than a slab collapse and indicating a serious structural defect, according to officials of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).
The steel cantilever bridge connecting the CSMT to B.T. Lane, across the busy D.N. Road, was constructed in the early 1980s. It collapsed in an instant around 7.35 p.m., officials said. Most of the victims were those walking atop the bridge, the NDRF officials said.
“The bridge appears to have had serious structural issues since the cross beams collapsed along with the concrete. In a slab collapse, the frame would have remained intact,” an official said. The FOB, whose structural audit was done in 2018 following the Elphinstone Road stampede, is maintained by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
The audit had proposed minor repairs to the FOB, which had only been tendered recently.
NDRF commander Mahesh Nalavade said there was little or no pedestrian traffic under the bridge as it was a busy street and there were footpaths on either side. The NDRF team reached the spot nearly 40 minutes after the incident, from their base in Andheri. “We managed to rescue around 20 people who were trapped under the debris. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of debris since the bridge span was short,” Mr. Nalavade said.
Professor Pradipta Banerjee of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, who headed the bridge inspection team in the aftermath of the Andheri bridge collapse said, “If a bridge is found to have any issues then it should be shut to the public until such time the repairs are conducted.” The team found the road overbridges at Lower Parel and Kalyan unsafe and asked for them to be shut down immediately.
This one, however, fell through the cracks.
