Nine persons were injured, two of them seriously, when a slab of the flyover under construction at Bairamalguda collapsed and fell on them in the early hours of Wednesday.
All the injured have been shifted to a corporate hospital in Secunderabad for treatment, among whom one worker’s condition is said to be critical. Seven persons — six workers and a site engineer — who received minor injuries have provided first aid, an official statement said. With the exception of site engineer Gopalakrishna, all the other victims were from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The flyover is part of the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) being implemented by the GHMC, with the aim to connect the Bairamalguda junction with the Sagar Ring Road.
A statement from the authorities informed that the left hand side clover leaf loop work was in progress when the accident took place. Casting of 11th deck slab started around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, and the slab caved in suddenly at 3 a.m. during the last leg of concrete pouring.
Reason for the collapse is yet to be determined, but eyewitnesses say that a concrete mixer vehicle hit the scaffolding structure supporting the slab while being taken in the reverse.
As the road beneath was free of vehicular traffic, there were no civilian casualties or injuries. Damage to lives and property could have been much higher had the incident happened during peak hours, sources said.
Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao visited the hospital and spoke to the injured persons, assuring them that the State government would bear all the expenses for the treatment.
Mr. Rama Rao issued instructions to the Special Chief Secretary Arvind Kumar towards investigation into the incident by an independent third party agency, preferably JNTU. He also directed for constitution of a committee of chief engineers of GHMC headed by the Engineer-in-Chief for conducting an inquiry into the cause of the incident, and fixing of responsibility. Mayor Gadwal Vijayalakshmi too visited the injured, and assured them of treatment.
This is the second incident of collapse of a flyover under construction in the city so far. In September, 2007, two large concrete slabs of the Punjagutta flyover, then under construction, fell on people taking cover from rain underneath the flyover, taking close to 20 lives.
