Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started demolishing the dilapidated foot overbridges (FOB) across the city since early this week. The demolition is carried on the zonal level after the Bridges department gave clearances to bring down all bridges, which were marked for demolition but the plan wasn’t executed.
“The FOBs which are demolished were already closed for public use. We are demolishing such dilapidated bridges as disaster management”, said Harshad Kale, Deputy Municipal Commissioner (DMC) of Zone 1.
In Zone 1 itself, two FOBs in Chandanwadi area of Marine lines (C ward) have been demolished during Holi and the Charni Road bridge will be demolished next week.
“I am not aware of Railway’s decision of demolition of the section of Charni Road’s bridge which comes under their jurisdiction. We are going to demolish the part which comes under BMC,” Mr Kale added.
This move comes after the Himalaya FOB collapse near CSMT on March 14, which killed six people and injured 31. In the recent structural audit, whichever bridges were deemed to be dangerous were marked for demolition and tenders were also invited.
“The Bridges department had floated tenders to demolish the bridges, but the tenders did not materialise and demolition was pending,” Mr Kale said. Thus, the BMC staff took the help of private parties for equipments and have started demolishing the ‘dangerous’ bridges themselves in order to avoid any disaster in the future.
On the other hand, BMC has decided to appoint another structural consultant who will help the civic body to analyse the cause of the Himalaya bridge collapse.
The inspection of the remains of the dismantled Himalaya FOB, which is stored in a civic godown, is underway.
The Asian Age tried to contact BMC’s Chief Engineer of Bridges department, Sanjay Dar-ade who wasn’t available for comment. Mr Darade along with a few other engineers of his department has recorded a statement in Azad Maidan police station with regards to the Himalaya bridge collapse.
