A part of the Gokhale Bridge collapsed at 7.30 A. M. on Tuesday in Mumbai’s Andheri region. The foot overbridge collapsed due to the heavy rains. Five persons were injured but there were no reported casualties. No one was trapped under the debris.
Since the news of the collapse was announced, engineers, fire brigade personnel and other agencies have been in action, working on clearing the debris. The train services have been put to a halt. According to the officials, it will resume after four hours.
The city faced traffic congestion due to the collapse and subsequent halt of train services. In several tweets, the Mumbai Police gave directions to commuters and motorists to reduce congestion.
The collapse has taken the life of a woman and brought to light the serious conditions of the bridges in Mumbai.
It has raised serious concerns about the city’s infrastructure. The Central Railway, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and IIT Bombay experts have begun a structural audit of all the 445 bridges going over railway tracks in Mumbai. The audit will take about three to four months to provide concrete results.
The assessment is expected to reveal whether the construction of these bridges is strong enough to hold off the load of people, vehicles and utilities. The process will also inform whether the designs on which the bridges have been constructed are appropriate in the first place.
According to the Transportation expert Sudhir Badami and an IIT Bombay civil and structural engineering graduate, the bridge is constructed in a manner that it can take a certain amount of weight. This includes the permanent weight of the structure itself and the live weight which is based on the utilities that pass through the bridge.
The audit will reveal the causes of the collapse. It is suspected to be caused by accumulated rust on top and bottom holdings.
