[sustran] Hasty infrastructure development leads to unhappy surprises

[Hassaan Ghazali]

Folks,

The news item below urges us to think twice about how much we value
efficiency and expeditiousness in infrastructure development. I'm wondering
if there are any more tragic stories from other jurisdictions and what we
can do to curb low quality infrastructure.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/400658/public-safety-truck-driver-dies-under-collapsed-bridge/

*A truck driver from Sargodha was killed inside his vehicle by a pedestrian
bridge in an accident on the Ring Road in North Cantonment on Thursday.*

Officials said that Rana Sajjad, 25, a resident of Chak 43, Sargodha, was
driving with the ‘bucket’ of his truck up and it struck the overhead bridge
on the Ring Road near the Harbanspura grid station. The bridge collapsed on
the truck and crushed the vehicle.

Hundreds of bystanders gathered at the scene and sought to pull out the
driver, but heavy machinery was needed to remove the debris. Rescue 1122
later called cranes to remove the collapsed section of the concrete bridge.

Rescue officials said that the driver had been crushed under the weight.
They said an autopsy was being conducted.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif arrived at the scene and ordered an inquiry.
District Coordination Officer Noorul Amin Mengal and Commissioner Jawad
Raffique Malik also visited the accident site.

Officials of the National Engineering Service of Pakistan (NESPAK) who had
visited the scene of the accident said that the driver had likely raised
the truck bucket to clean it, which was a common but illegal practice by
truckers. They said that oil from the hydraulic pump that raises the bucket
in the truck was leaked all over the road, indicating that the bucket was
up.

They said that the raised bucket struck the beam, which rested on the
pillar via a projection that fit inside a recess in the column. The impact
of the bucket on the beam broke the wall of the recess and the beam came
crashing down on the truck. They said that there was no other attachment
between the beam and column.

Ring Road Authority Deputy Director Najam Waheed told *The Express
Tribune* that
there were 20 overhead pedestrian bridges on the Northern Loop of the Ring
Road of which at least 16 were concrete constructions of the same design as
the bridge that collapsed.

Col (retired) Asim, the director for enforcement as well as operations and
maintenance in the Lahore Ring Road Authority, said that the Chief
Minister’s Inspection Team had been tasked with conducting an inquiry. He
said that veteran civil engineers would be involved in the inquiry. He said
that only physical impact could have brought the bridge down.

He said that under agreements with the Ring Road Authority, the
construction companies that had built pedestrian bridges were to maintain
the bridges for a year or two before the authority took responsibility.

He said the bridge that collapsed had been built in June 2009, while the
railing had been installed in September that year, by Khalid Rauf and
Company.

*Published in The Express Tribune, June 29th, 2012.*


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