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-   -   Morbi Bridge collapse in Gujarat (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/258621-morbi-bridge-collapse-gujarat-4.html)

Discipline and law abiding is a habit. You cant do it in some places and choose not at others.

Recently a big portion of Sumanahalli bridge in Bengaluru caved in. Since I drive through the flyover it was appalling to see how could a RCC structure like that cave in. People raised the maintenance issue but still it did not dis integrate slowly. A big portion just gave in.

I do think about what if when going below flyovers, metro bridges etc. The dis-honesty, corruption and just keeping money as sole criteria has crept into too many things in our country. Its started to rust from within.

As reported today, the Police have stated that no major renovation was carried out. Only Cables were polished and painting carried out besides the earlier reported replacing the flooring with Aluminium Honeycomb plates.
The process was hastened to open before Gujarati New Year.

But, public too is responsible for their behaviour.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/670054...?s=yWDuG2&fs=e

I usually keep away and don't react to such posts on TBHP because I come here only for the automotive & travel content, but seeing some opinions here, I'm forced to react.

Morbi incident is a grim reminder of the country we are becoming. Earlier, when such incidents happened citizens of this country would find out the root cause and the authorities would be blamed most of the time because of improper crowd management or regulation, lack of quality of renovation or construction, questions would be asked about who approved the usage of such low-grade quality products, who gave the approval for usage, etc. Such questions were asked boldly by the media.

As proud citizens of this great nation, we all should be aware of what's happening. The govt. is trying to reach the level of being holier-than-thou, and the media is also trying to find the science behind why the bridge collapsed instead of asking questions about why the bridge was opened without an inspection post-renovation. Shame on everyone who's blaming the people on the bridge, some of who are probably dead too! :thumbsdown

I am aghast to find that people are being blamed for the tragedy that happened. Those very people who are no more. There was this bridge which needed tickets to be bought and hence, the crowding could have been regulated easily if the authorities did their work diligently. That the bridge was opened after renovation without due diligence and structural audit is criminal. According to the reports, the flooring of the bridge was changed and it became heavy due to it but the cables were not changed.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india...347988771.html

Almost similar thing happened in Calcutta few years back when Majherhat bridge collapsed due to continuous adding of bitumen layer on the bridge surface. It has become a norm to accept mediocrity these days. Happens when there is no accountability from the power's that be and no one raises a question.

Bridges need scientific repairs and planning and perhaps we all know that and yet, the authorities sitting on high chair's care too hoots about public safety. This whole shifting the blame on people for their own death is shameful and needs to be condemned. The farce that went on in the name of meeting the victims and the overnight gloss provided to the Morbi Hospital proves how the public is treated by those in power :Frustrati

So many people have died and instead of fixing responsibilities, we are busy blaming the people who died. What we have come to really !! My heart goes out to people who have lost their near and dear ones.

I think using this thread to also highlight people's behaviour in our society is not needed. Crowd control has never been an aspect of our policy/procedure.

In the recent Halloween disaster in S.Korea, the govt said they had no procedures for the handling of crowd surges when there were no organizers and accepted responsibility.

We dont even think on those lines. We are allowed to use every inch of space on anything - bridges, buses, trains, auto, 2 wheeler....

This is an extremely tragic event for the country especially when the number of casualties is there in the top 10 of such kinds of cases in the world .

The culpability of the owners and managers of the company is of the same level as that of the Uphaar Cinema tragedy of the 1996.The greed of the cinema manager had led to uphaar fire tragedy whereby tickets for Border movie were oversold and excess people were accomodated inside.A compensation of nearly one crore rupee to the next of kin who lost their lives in the fire tragedy was awarded by the Honorable Supreme court of India and even the owners of the cinema were given jail sentences.

It's my sincere hope that the above cited level of compensation and jail term is awarded against the defaulting company and the government officials.

Unfortunately, it will not happen that way for following reasons :
1. The Public in Cinema were not as unruly as is evident in various videos.
2. The victims of Bridge collapse are probably not as influential as the victims of Uphaar Cinema tragedy.

I don’t know what videos you have access to but 54 kids died in the tragedy, among the 134 dead people. So yeah, one can imagine how unruly the public was, on the death bridge !

I see a lot of comments which blame the specific contractor in question, the government in power, the bureaucrats like Collector & Police/corporation officials, the people on the bridge etc. In my opinion, most of these comments don't really address the root causes of this incident.

This incident really highlights the structural gaps that exist today in various regulations. First of all, I am not even clear on what kind of structure the Morbi bridge would be categorized as. Was it a recreational tourist attraction of historical significance or just another pedestrian over bridge? Ideally the protocols to design & manage/operate these structures should depend directly on this categorization and other related information like projected capacity of the bridge, growth prospects of that area, soil quality of the area, chance for flooding etc. For eg if it was just another pedestrian overbridge, why did we really do a rope/net bridge etc? If it's a tourist destination, you want to really focus on the operational protocols keeping in mind a limited capacity/heritage structure

There also needs to be clear lines of accountability so that we know who is to blame in case something goes wrong before it goes wrong!. Today we try and find somebody to blame after the event and at that time all kind of dynamics come into play like political climate/leanings, personal relationships/leanings, pet peeves etc. Usually this results in some guy being made the scape goat for what is really a systemic issue.

This could be a titanic event in India if we draw the right lessons from this. After all, the sinking of Titanic more than a century back really led to changes in shipping regulations/protocols. Let's see if that happens due to this bridge collapse.

This is ridiculous. The ticket sellers and manager will go behind bars without representation and the local MLA’s / municipal guys who are actually responsible will go scot-free.

So, the bar association has already declared them guilty? This is very shocking to attribute the blame to one party with no investigation, no representation and no trial.

Each and every member of that Morbi Bar Association must be debarred for life.

The adversarial system of justice exists to enable a fair representation and a fair trial where the facts are brought out.

By refusing to fully and entirely defend any accused, a lawyer is not doing any great favour to society. In fact they are doing a grave disservice to society, by not bringing out all the facts of the case, by not allowing the exact quantum of guilt and mitigating circumstances to be unearthed, and by leaving the judicial decision open to the criticism that this was an unfair trial as the accused did not get proper representation.

What can mere mortals on the bar and bench do when things go wrong because the tragedy was destined to happen?
:Frustrati

Heard the same incompetent contractor had been awarded this job multiple times in the past. The best the clock maker could do was the painting of rusty cables:Shockked: instead of replacing it, how dare we blame clock makers?!!

We take pride in insignificant things that least bothers the citizens of a country. We conveniently avoid the bare fact that human life has trivial value here and we live by it everyday. We must be ashamed of ourselves, this too shall pass....