Collapse Bridge

7/30/2019 Collapse Bridge

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"DON'T BURY THEM IN THE MORNING"

IT WAS ALMOST LUNCHTIME when the school kids made a run for it. A blur of red-and-grey chequered uniforms, they were hoisted onto scooters and crammed into autos parked in thelight rain outside Our Lady of Fatima Convent High School. The school, and the moss-tingedPortuguese fort it sat in, shone in the August drizzle. A wet road led down to a breach in theforts walls, beyond which the land swelled to a crest over a muddy river. On this side was Moti

Daman, where the districts administrative offices were sheltered within the forts stone

ramparts. On the other side, the northern side, were Nani Damans liquor stores, beaches, andhotels. Together, these two halves formed the tranquil seaside town of Daman, held fast by thetowns only bridge, a workaday construction 20 years old.

Fakir Mohammad Fadra, a wiry cable-service operator with a purposeful walk, lived at theeastern end of the Nani Daman promenade. A thicket of mangroves obscured the view of thebridge from the front door of his house, but the Daman Ganga River, only feet away, he couldsee just fineand on that day in the summer of 2003, the river looked swollen, as it often didwhen officials at the dam upstream released water. He couldnt help keeping watch. Twice in his

lifetime the river had burst its banks, forcing the towns residents onto rooftops for airdropped

supplies.

It was nearly 1.30 pmtime for his four children and four nieces to return from school to thehome he shared with the families of his brother and sister. The Fadras were old faces in the smalltown of 36,000; Daman knew Fadra as Baba, and after all this time, it recognised him by noother name. (Fakir who? Oh, Baba!) Residents on both sides of the river subscribed to his

cable television service. He had lately begun to feel that goons had overrun the trade, and hadhired a hefty young man to help him run the servicethe muscle to Fadras lean frame. Theprevious year, his father, Captain Nizamuddin Fadra, had died from prostate cancer after a longand rich life lived mostly on the sea. Towards the end, the captain told his wife to make sure shelooked after their 14-year-old granddaughter Tafsir, one of Fadras daughters, whom they bothadored.

That day, she didnt want to go to school, Fadra told me when I visited his home. Tafsir smileddown from a studio photograph on a shelf in his sitting room. She loved sch ool, and he couldntremember her missing a day. But that morning, Tafsir asked her parents if she could stay at homeinstead. The request was so unusual that they agreed. Then Tafsir changed her mind, as teenagersdo, and left. She was excited, Fadra remembered: she had always wanted to go to LondonFadra had a brother in Gloucesterand they had just applied for her first passport. Abba, whenI go to London, Ill send you money back, she told him.


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When he realised the time, the rickshaw driver who picked up the Fadra children each day putdown his afternoon drink at a bar by the bridge, and hurried to Our Lady of Fatima. The kidswere already walking home when he met them outside the school. Youre always late. Werenot getting in, they told the driver. So he turned the auto back toward Nani Daman, drivingcarefully over the bridge between students on foot, the narrow structure vibrating beneath them.

Constable Kinjalkumar Patel, on traffic signal duty, had stopped vehicles at Nani Daman so thatpeople coming from the schools direction could cross the bridge. The structure was built for asmaller Daman: at three-and-a-half metres, it wasnt wide enough to let two small cars pass eachother. As Patel directed traffic, the rickshaw Fadra had sent to fetch the kids went by, empty. Afew more approached. One carried two kids and Mrs Pandya, one of the schools language

teachers. The other had 10 young passengers. Motorcycles and scooters zipped across thebridges puddled surface.

Bharat Patel, a young math teacher, carried test papers to grade at home as he crossed on foot.He was a young gentleman, Pandya said. Very active, very good. He would have been home

sooner, but had forgotten the papers at Our Lady of Fatima, and had turned back to retrieve them.Pooja Pathak, a seventh-graderand Pandyas niecewas also walking across the bridge. Sheliked my teaching. In the morning Pooja told me, Maami, I want to come home and study [withyou], Pandya said. Then there were the eight Fadra cousins, with Fadras son, Aiyaz, up to

mischief: he kicked up rainwater on the bridge at his pigtailed sisters and cousins. Catch him

and beat him! they shouted, as his sisters Uzma and Tehzeeb ran madly behind him. Tafsir held

back from chasing her brother to chat with her cousins Sumaiya, Afza, Sana and Farheen. It wasafternoon now, and fishing boats bobbed in the whippy river below the long, crowded bridge.

JUST AFTER 1.30 PM, as Pandya and two children motored in a rickshaw past pier fivethesupport closest to Nani Damana strained joint over the pier snapped. Pandya heard a loud

bang, and then the earth shifted. Dont ask me about it, she told me. I still hear it.

The bridges tensive bonds were unravelling. Several tons of steel and asphalt yanked in opposite

directions. The rickshaw Pandya was in lurched backward, its nose lifting toward the sky, andthe two children beside her tumbled out onto the road. The rickshaw slammed back down. Frominside, she reached out for the bridge railing, while the driver scrambled over the bridges wetsurface to catch both children. Pandya didnt know what was going on, but the section they were

on had first broken at the pier, and almost immediately at the abutment, where the bridge met theland. She heard children in the water below, screaming for help. Holding on was hard enough,she told me, and she hadnt dared turn around to look at them. Within minutes, fishermen

approached her in their rocking boats, and told her to jump in, but she gripped the railing inwhite-knuckled terror.

Leena Fegade, a nine-year-old, had been crossing the bridge on foot beside her mother. Theywere behind Pandyas rickshaw, and nearly across the river, when the bridge plunged beneaththeir feet. On her way down, Leena managed to catch hold of a rod pegged to the bridge. Shelooked about in panic, but her mother had disappeared. The fishermen who were in the water

told me to leave the rod and jump in, she later told the police. Leena let go and fell down intothe water; the fishermen plucked her out and left her on the rivers north bank.


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When the bridges first joint split, the strain led to more fractures. The span broke in four places,

forming a W-shaped heap of metal. As they fell, Sharda, Leenas mother, lost hold of herdaughters hand. Children around her were drowning. She didnt know where Leena was. Shecouldnt move. Something had pinned her leg underwater. Whatever was holding her down was

heavy, so the fishermen who came to rescue her had to pull her out of the river with a force that

dislocated her leg, leaving her in agony. They took her to shore, where she found Leena amongthe other survivors.

Fadra was at home when he heard the noise and the human roar that followed. He ran past thenarrow homes of fishermen that lined the promenade, towards the bridge. There he saw hischildren Aiyaz and Tehzeeb standing about a dozen metres from the abutment, behind a parkedcar. His daughter Uzma was nearby, but Fadra didnt notice her. What happened? heremembered asking Tehzeeb. Where is Uzma and everyone else? Tehzeeb saw the disaster, andshe couldnt say anything, Fadra told me. Aiyaz said that the bridge broke with them in the

middle.

Fadra didnt wait. He dove into the river. Taut mooring ropes that held fishing boats in high tidetore skin from his arms. As he swam, he noticed Pandyawho had once been his teacherstanding on a tilted section of the broken bridge. She waved at him. A little further, he felt thesensation of an electrical current. Over time, the bridge had acquired dead load in the form ofnew power lines, telephone wires and water pipes that ran along its length and, as he passed by,Fadra thought that the severed wires were electrifying the water. They turned off the electricitylater, he told me. He climbed out of the river at pier five, and onto a broken stretch of thebridge. From there he pressed forward to the school to look for his daughters and nieces, butcouldnt find them. He returned to the bridge and surveyed the damage, and now the terriblethought he had resisted all along bore down on him: his brother had lost all three daughters, andhis sister, whose husband had died years earlier, had now lost her only child; two of his ownchildren were gone. He was suddenly so tired.

Damans residents poured out of its narrow streets and massed by the bridge, pressing against the

towns small police force, which was trying to let emergency responders work. The police had

come almost immediately; within minutes of the collapse, every man and woman was ordered toreport to work, and all other business was put aside. Within an hour, a coast-guard helicopterdroned overhead, circling the river and looking for survivors. Residents offered to carry theinjured to nearby hospitals in their own cars. A photographer from Naaz, a local photo shop,filmed the broken bridge, and took pictures of the dead as they came out of the water.

At 3 pm, the bodies of Sumaiya, Afza, Sana, Farheen and Tafsir were found by rescuers andfishermen under debris at pier five. All five of them were found in one place, Fadra told me.They were all together, no? From a plastic bag he carefully pulled out a picture of the five girls

laid beside each other. It was difficult, but I kept this one copy of them. Thats them. One, two,

three, four, five.

When the cousins bodies were brought back, Fadra noticed that their skin had turned dark in

places. He was certain the marks were electrical burns. (The childrens autopsies, however, madeno mention of this, and a police officer I inquired with seemed puzzled by the claim.) A relative


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who worked with the district administration soon came to meet with Fadra and the family. In aroom down a passage from the front door, the five girls lay shrouded in white at their mothersfeet. The relative pleaded with the family: Dont bury them in the morning. The collapse hadkilled 28 school children and two adults, and the town had been on edge all day. He said that

people were angry, Fadra recalled, and if they sawthe children, they would riot.

TECHNICALLY SAFE AND SOUND.

THE DAMAN BRIDGE SPANNED NEARLY 265 METRES between abutments. From theside, its steel supports, below the deck, resembled a row of touching Xs held up by unevenlyspaced piers. It was similar to Bailey bridges, which are built from prefabricated modularsections, and used by armies and others for quick assembly of temporary crossings.

This was the bridges latest incarnation. During the five decades before it opened, in 1983, thetown had seen other bridges rise and fall. When one, built in 1932, failed, it took two peopledown with it, a former resident writing a book on Daman told me. In 1965, a company namedShah Constructions was contracted to build a bridge where the first one had stood. Three yearslater, this too collapsed. The same company rebuilt it, but, in 1976, a stretch of the bridge deckwas washed away.

In September 1978, the local administration called for bids to restore the failed bridge, and anIndian company named Quadricon won the contract based on a projected cost of Rs. 31.8 lakh(Rs 3.18 million), the lowest of five bids. Quadricons founders had patented a modular system

in which prefabricated steel triangles were held together by Quadricons unishear connectorssolid steel blocks that held the triangles in a tight embrace. (With occasional maintenance, thepatented union was built to last over seven decades). The system was inexpensive, popularintime, the company would build over 200 bridgesand supposedly efficient. But there weredelays to the project, and the bridge was finally ready only on 26 April 1983.

The structure was without frills: a simple walkway above modular units placed on wide piers. Itwas a temporary measure, meant only for pedestrians and emergency vehicles, until a largerbridge was built. But plans for the bigger bridge were delayed, and the temporary measurebecame a permanent one. Bikes, cars and buses motored across regularly, and there were nolimits to how fast they could go. We allowed 20 vehicles on the bridge at a time, JG Rana, a

former superintending engineer for Damans public works department (PWD), later testified. At

night, trucks brimming with cargo headed for Gujarat drove over it in full view of a policeoutpost one street away, Fadra told me. It wasnt allowed, but they used to go. At the sametime, Daman began to swell with an influx of migrants attracted by new manufacturing jobs inthe areathe population would double between 1981 and 2001and by 2003, one in threefamilies owned a vehicle of some kind. They all used the bridge.


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Warning signs that the bridge needed repairs repeatedly went unheeded. In May 1997, anengineer new to Damans PWD noticed that one of the roller bearings, which allowed the bridge

to expand in the heat and contract in cold without damaging the piers beneath, had shifted out ofposition. I had reported this fact to the superintending engineer as well as executive engineer,

and I brought them on the site and had shown the displaced bearing to them, the engineer, J

Prabhakar, later said to an investigative committee. Prabhakar found more bearings that were outof position. The bridge, he thought, was past its use-by date. I used to remind Rana [thesuperintending engineer] about the displaced bearings, Prabhakar told the committee. I hadalso cautioned my superiors that the guarantee period of the life span of the bridge was over andit was necessary to check [with] experts [about] structural stability. Daman PWD officials wroteto Quadricon, who advised that the bearing could be put back in place, but that it would benecessary to investigate why the displacement had occurred. It is unclear, however, if anyattempt was made to discern the cause of the dislocation.

Letters and documents I obtained from the Home Ministry under the Right to Information Actrevealed that after Quadricons chairman personally visited the bridge to inspect the bearings in

1998, the company sent a letter to the Daman PWD, warning that repairs were urgently needed.The letter noted that when the bridge was built, Quadricon had recommended applying to thesteel bridge a thick coat of zinc paint with another coat of zinc chromate, to keep corrosion atbay. Instead, Quadricons letter noted, epoxy paint had been used. The bridge structure isexposed to severe corrosive atmosphere, the letter said. There was a lot of corrosion visible all

throughout the structure.

SOME SAY THE SOIL IS DIFFICULT there. Some believe there are other forces at work.When we were little boys, my grandmother and aunt always kept a watch on us, Cedric

Pereira, now a businessman in Hong Kong, told me as we waited outside Damans Church ofOur Lady of the Sea for the end of mass one recent Sunday. Every ten minutes, every five

minuteswhere we were, what we were doing. Daman's luck with bridges was unfathomablypoor, and so its people sought comfort in what they couldn't explain. "There was a belief that theblood of sacrificed children was used to strengthen foundations, Pereira told me; when thebridge fell in 2003, some in the town believed the children who went into the water were invited

by the children sacrificed there.

During the 20 years before it collapsed, the bridge connecting Nani and Moti Daman satexposed, a few hundred metres from Indias western coast, unprotected from sea air and tides.Bridges in a marine environment are particularly vulnerable: salt in the water, and in the moistair, hastens their decay. When I visited the town in February, the effects of the salty air werevisible near an old Portuguese market several streets from the shore. It had chewed throughwindow gratings and the handlebars of motorbikes and bicycles. Pandya, the language teacher,said that her television set conked off regularly. Its the salt in the air, her daughter explained;it had corroded the televisions circuitry. Researchers at the offices of the National Institute of

Oceanography in Mumbai told me they visit Daman regularly to test the water. I have been

there a hundred times, the chief researcher said. A subordinate he summoned, who dealt withnumbers, said that the salinity fluctuation was from 5 to 30 grams of salt per litre of water,

making the Daman Ganga, at its highest extreme, only slightly less salty than the Dead Sea.


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The water contained further hazards. In 1999, Greenpeace collected a sample from a blackstream of waste flowing into the river from the direction of an effluent treatment plant at Vapi, adusty industrial town seven kilometres upstream from Daman. The sample revealed disquietinglevels of cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc.

Prolonged interaction with such pollutants shortens the lifespan of bridges. A scientist at theoceanography institute said that the problem had been magnified by the Madhuban damsconstruction upriver from Vapi and Daman. The waters natural flow had been interrupted. The

waste just settles there, he said. It doesnt move.

If the Daman PWD was aware of the severe environment the bridge existed in, there are fewsigns they strove to protect the structure in a meaningful way. The Daman Ganga River hadgrown more toxic with each passing year, researchers explained. The scientist, who had regularlymeasured pollution levels there, said that the industrial waste in the riverwas only semi-treated. It is acidic, he told me. Even cement will corrode there. I have been there 20 or 25

times over 20 years. Ive noticed oxygen depletion, an increase in ammonia and nitrate. Earlier,

the problem had a single source, he said. Now there are multiple problems and multiplesources of pollution. (By the time I visited, the water had become so toxic that there were now

no fish in the river, Govind, a former fisherman now guarding a house at Moti Daman, told me.)

In 2000, two tenders for repairs, rehabilitation and strengthening of existing bridge over DamanGanga River were issued by the PWD. Cracks needed grouting. Heavily rusted parts had tobe strengthened by welding new supports to older ones. The rusting surface required thick coatsof protective paint. The tenders were to the same end, but the PWD split the estimated overallcost of Rs. 96 lakh (Rs 9.6 million) into two smaller contracts, which allowed it to circumvent arule requiring approval from a higher authority for contracts over Rs. 70 lakh. Freyssinet, anengineering company vying for the contract, bid for both tenders at a projected cost of Rs. 91.5

lakh; it was the lowest overall bid the PWD received. The contract also stated that Freyssinet hadto maintain the bridge for a further six months after completing the repairs.

Quadricon, Freyssinet and Prabhakar, the PWD engineer, knew that the bridge was only asstrong as its weakest component, but workers could only rehabilitate parts of the bridge withintheir reach. Some places would need to be accessed from a viewing platform lowered from theside of the bridge, but such a platform didnt exist at Daman. Repeatedly, the companies and

Prabhakar advised the administration to construct a viewing platform below the bridge, but thiswas never done. As a result, inspectors and engineers could not possibly assess the bridges

strength, and repair work could not fully be carried out.

(Sometime before 2003, during an echo-test to determine the Daman Gangas depth, researchersfrom the National Institute of Oceanography passed under the bridge in a boat and found that silthad accumulated on one side of the piers, and the river bed had eroded on the other. Thephenomenon, called scour, was not uncommon to river bridges, but under extreme conditions,such as a flood, a bridge could be at risk. If the water flow is strong enough, the bridge can

collapse because the base is unsteady, a researcher from the institute told me.)


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Although the bridges maladies were multiplying, the PWDs engineers continued to certify that

nothing was wrong with it. When the rehabilitation work concluded in June 2001, Bharat Gupta,the executive engineer of Damans PWD at the time, handed over a completion certificate toFreyssinet. In December, Gupta wrote to his boss, the superintending engineer DK Vaghela,Since there is no apparent defect in the completed work and the maintenance period is also over

... it is proposed to release 100% total Security Deposit amounting to Rs. 740,126.00 toFreyssinet.

In March 2003, five months before the collapse, the bridge was once again deemed officiallysafe. Gupta wrote in a routine inspection certificate: It is to certify that the existing bridge

connecting Moti Daman and Nani Daman has been inspected by the undersigned on 25/03/2003and on inspection it is observed and found that various structures of the Bridge appear to betechnically safe and sound and the same are in normal working conditions.

THE SYSTEM IS SO CORRUPT,ITS BETTER TO BYPASS IT.

IN APRIL OF THIS YEAR, three hydraulic trailers carrying enormous loads left a Mumbaiport for the Power Grid Corporation of India, in Indore. Each hauled a consignment weighingover 200 tons. They travelled through Maharashtra until the bustling border check post atMadhya Pradesh. To reach their destination, the trailers would have to cross four bridges along a184-kilometre stretch of National Highway 3 built and operated by two private companies. Theprivate operators asked the trucks to wait, and referred the case to the National HighwaysAuthority of India (NHAI), an arm of the Ministry of Road Transportation and Highways that

controls over 30,000 kilometres of national roads. Vijay Shrivastava, an NHAI project directorwho oversees that section of the highway, refused. These bridges are on build-operate-transferbasis, Shrivastava told me, referring to the terms of the contract, which require the private firm

to operate and maintain the highways and bridges for a set period after their construction. Whycant the operators take care of it?

Both the NHAI and the concessioners who built the highway were reluctant to let the trailerspass because they werent sure whether the bridges could handle the weight. In January, the

ministry had issued guidelines, drafted by a consortium of engineering firms, that detailed therules for dealing with overweight loads, but Shrivastava was wary of the specifications theofficial document contained, and he didnt trust the hydraulic trailer companies. Would youbelieve a transporter carrying a piece of paper that specified the weight of the cargo? he said.

According to Shrivastava, the bridges were built to handle weights under 150 tons. Suppose Icarry 25 kg on my shoulders, he said. I can walk safely. But suppose you load 50 kg on myshoulders. I can carry it to some extent. But what will happen to my body if I carry it again andagain? That is the case with bridges. They can carry the load, but you cant assess the damageimmediately. Some distress can occur at a later stage. The lifespan can be reduced. So whyshould one allow overweight loads?


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While the trailers headed to Indore stood still at the check post for weeks, representatives fromthe Hydraulic Trailer Owners Association spoke with officers at the roads ministry. The chiefengineer of bridges in India, Arun Pathak, told NHAI to let the trailers pass. Here, officialinitiative faced on-the-ground reality: if a bridge failed under the weight of the trailers,Shrivastava knew that, as the man in charge of this stretch of the highway, he alone would be

held accountable. Everybody knows that the ministerand people up the official hierarchywill not be held responsible, he told me. His fears were well-founded: the people closest to thesite of an accident are often the first to be held accountable. In 2009, a bridge near Bhavnagar inGujarat buckled under a 132-wheel hydraulic trailer delivering its first consignment, a 280-tongas turbine meant for a power plant. Five people were killed, and the driver was arrested.

Manish Kataria, the joint secretary of the Hydraulic Trailer Owners Association, told me that oneof his trailers was currently stalled in Orissa because goons were demanding a bribe to let itpass. He said it was typical of how his business was conducted in both legal and extralegalchannels, but argued that only the defenceless found themselves in trouble. Its like the girl who

belongs to the village, he said, after searching for what he thought was a reasonable metaphor.

Everyone hastheir way with her.

Eventually, the trailers turned around and took an 1,800-kilometre detour, through Gujarat andRajasthan, to Indore. The project was delayed by three months, Kataria said. And yet, this

wasnt the longest delay he knew of. Kataria had seen a project held back by six months for thesame reason on National Highway 3. The trailer had spent four months at one spot, until theministry issued specific orders to let it through, he said. The rest of the journey was finished in20 days. The system is so corrupt, its better to bypass it.

BRIDGE FAILURESare always sudden; their causes rarely are. Damans was a story ofincremental neglect that ended in disaster. Each count of neglect was a breach of the implicit

assurance of safety given by those who build and maintain bridges to those who use themwithout questioning their stability. Yet the institutional failures that led to disaster in Damancontinue to prevail across the country.

For years now, great things have been planned for Indias infrastructure. Last June, ManmohanSingh promised to approve nearly 10,000 kilometres of new highways, port projectsworth Rs. 35,000 crore (Rs 350 billion), new airports, and other necessary development. At aconference in March of this year, he said that expenditure on infrastructure between 2012 and2017 needed to double to $1 trillion. In 1996, the roads ministry was responsible for 33,000kilometres of national highways and 6,400 bridges. Seventeen years later, it oversees 79,116kilometres of national highways and, according to official estimates, around 20,000 bridges. Theroads ministrys annual expenditure in 200910 was six times what it spent in 19992000.During the same period, the number of registered vehicles doubled to 115 million. The agenda,as befits a country on the up, is all about the new things that need to be built, not about theinfrastructure that needs fixing.

But heres what has happened: since 2008, at least six bridges have failed under the weight of

heavy vehicles. All told, in the past 12 years there have been over 23 bridge failures in India,killing 310 people and injuring more than 450. Wood bridges, steel bridges, vehicular bridges,


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pedestrian bridges. Old bridges, and even new bridges. Some are faulty from the start. Threemonths ago, a Kolkata flyover that had been built only two years earlier collapsed; a committeeformed after the failure found that the bridges design was flawed.

Modern infrastructure is built on a foundation of older constructions. As spending increases, the

success of new ventures will, in large part, hinge on how well Indias existing network of roadsand bridges holds up. This was the tack taken by hydraulic trailer owners I spoke to. They werekeen to tell me that in the end, India would pay the bill for freight held up by doubts over thehealth of its bridges. Everyday, Kataria told me, consignments like the one headed to Indore aresuspended in a logistical purgatory in various parts of the country. If you look at the last 50

years, earlier these consignments were rare, and they were not as heavy, Kataria told me. Now,instead of carrying a status unit for a 250MW power plant, we are carrying loads five timesbigger for 1200MW power plants. These enormous objects, mystifying when seen in isolation,are the ingredients of Indias vaunted infrastructure push, but they linger on roadsides because

bridges along national highways arent built to support them.

A dizzying configuration of private and public agencies manages Indias 4.7-million-kilometre-long road and bridge network. The Union roads ministry oversees most national highways, butthe upkeep of roads and bridges is left to the public works departments of the states thosehighways pass through. Some national highways that dont come under the ministry belong tothe NHAI and consortiums of private operators. Others are looked after by the Border RoadsOrganisation. This alone makes the transport of heavy loads challenging. Its very difficult to

find out who controls a bridge, Kataria said to me, describing the absence of signboards andother necessary markers. It was not unusual for freight companies to spend a month figuring outjurisdictions so that they could apply for permission to use a particular route. Government

bridges are the easiest, he said. It is the private operators who cause a problem. To hastenpermissions, often from officials on the ground, consultants told me it was routine to paygovernment employees bribes; private operators, it is believed, arent as easily swayed.

As India spends more on upgrading its road network, each of these bodies has more work to do.Yet, while spending on new projects has increased, allocations meant for the maintenance ofexisting infrastructure are nowhere near enough. According to data collected by a group ofresearchers, including Sanjay Wakchaure, a joint director at the Indian Academy of HighwayEngineers, approximately Rs. 890 crore (Rs 8.9 billion) was allocated from 2008 to 2012 by theministry and states to maintain 93,000 bridges all over India. This works out toapproximately Rs. 19,000 for each bridge annually. Generally, funds made available for themaintenance of roads and bridges are about 40 to 50 percent of the requirement, Wakchauretold me. There simply isnt enough money to ensure that bridges and roads are checked

regularly, as codes laid down by the Indian Roads Congress (IRC), a society founded by thecentral government which gives officials a template for work on roads and bridges, prescribe.

Bridge consultants and a former roads ministry official told me that a bridge safety crisis hasbeen brewing for some time. Because there are greater stresses than ever before, problems onceignored are now seeing daylight. Of the many problems that now lay exposed, none was asstartling as what the chief engineer of bridges in India told me: nobody knows the state of Indias

bridges.


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A bridge has a shelf life. From the moment of its creation, it begins to weaken. Guidelineswritten by the IRC state that surface material erodes, and then what lies beneath it erodes, too.This decay occurs constantly, like the wearing of enamel. Rumbling vehicular traffic leads tofatigue corrosion, the atrophying of a material due to regular stresses. Where different metals arewelded together, they risk galvanic corrosion because of their dissimilar elemental properties.

Under adverse conditions, such corrosion drills deceptively deep.

Checking roads is relatively easy. They exist on one plane, and a visual inspection can suffice.Not so bridges, with their abutments, tread, decking, truss, stringer and bearings. Searching for abridges defects requires focus and time. A 100-metre long stretch of bridge needs a week toinspect, NK Sinha, a senior consultant who was previously the director general for roads in the

ministry, said to me. At most you can do 200 metres. You have to do it properly. Even if its anew bridge, you need to see the condition of the bearings, other things ... In a day? To inspect thewhole thing? No. But the engineers in PWDs across the country are generalists. Training

programs exist at the Indian Academy of Highway Engineers; just how many engineers haveattended the programs is unknown.

The increase in the quantity and weight of road traffic, the administrative morass, and theshortfall in budgets and trained inspectors have also been compounded by venality. Consultants Ispoke with pointed at two recent bridge failures involving hydraulic trailers carrying heavy loadsin Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. They said that government departments were so unsure of thestate of bridges that hydraulic trailer companies had to hire private engineering companiesapproved by the roads ministry to inspect them. Only then would they be allowed to proceedalong that route. To use one of the road ministrys [approved] consultants to examine bridges

for a project costs Rs. 20 lakh, Kataria said. We dont get paid that much to haul cargo.

The ministry has no way of knowing if its bridges are on the verge of failure. But it has

attempted to protect itself: official paperwork states that if bridges fail during the transport ofheavy goods, the transportation company will be held responsible. Not only is the testing of itsbridges outsourced by the ministry, so is the liability.

HOW COULD MY PROFESSION DO THIS?

THERE SEEMED TO BE NO END to the horror in Daman. All day the drowned wereextracted from the river, their larynxes logged with water, within sight of a crowd of restiveparents who demanded to see their children. Terse post-mortems, so hurriedly written that theywere nearly illegible, contained brutal observations: On pressure, bubbles come out of nostrils

and mouth. In one report, the coroner wrote, almost hesitantly, The deceased may be dead due

to drowning.

That night, the district police inspector for Daman, EJ Rosario, filed a complaint against the localPWD. It appears that the Daman Ganga Bridge was not maintained properly and the bridgecollapsed due to negligence, Rosario wrote. He charged the department with endangering life,

causing grievous hurt, causing death by negligence, and mischief causing damage to public


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property. The complaint did not explain how Rosario concluded that negligence and a lack ofmaintenance led to the failure.

The dead Fadra cousins lay shrouded at their mothers feet for hours as officials continued to

worry that the sight of so many young victims would push the town, already on edge, to revolt.

As night fell, however, a crowd of mourners gathered outside the Fadra home, and, at two in themorningtwelve hours after the collapsea funeral procession left for a nearby cemetery,where the five female cousins were buried together, their names on a single gravestone. For thenext two days, Daman rioted. Crowds on the street torched cars and pelted the police with stones.Reserve forces were called in. The crowds were fired upon, and one person died.

When the bridge collapsed, the practices of the local PWD were forced into the open. The Uniongovernments accounting office raised questions about financial irregularities. A retired justice of

the Bombay High Court, RJ Kochar, led a judicial inquiry that found systemic failures whereverhe looked. The department lacked a maintenance kit. Warnings from above and below werereportedly ignored. Load tests to check the bridges capacity were not carried out, even though

an assistant engineer alerted his superiors to the possibility that the structure was unsound.Engineers claimed they had inspected the bridge, but there were few details about their findingsbecause the PWD did not keep maintenance journals. One senior engineer did not visit thebridge, as the IRC codes recommended, but instead relied on the assurances of his subordinates.

Kochar learnt that the bridge was flawed from the very beginning. While the steel used for thebridge was mostly mechanically sound, its chemistry did not meet the specifications laid down

by the Bureau of Indian Standards for steel used in general structural purposes. The steel hadnot been tested, the PWD engineers testified before Kochars inquiry, because it came from the

Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), and they assumed it therefore met the specifications.Besides, none of them knew that testing was mandatory.

Professors at the National Metallurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur, who were asked to examinethe remains of the collapsed bridge, wrote, The corrosion rate of the used steel was abnormally

high in comparison to the other structural steel normally used for erection of bridges. Corrosiontests were conducted at 118 random points on the bridge; 117 showed severe corrosion. Due tothis weakness and the corrosion rate in Damans highly saline environment, the intensity of thestress on the bridges corroded locations increased, which further weakened the structure and

became the cause of failure.

There were also human failings from beginning to end. The PWDs officials admitted that they

had no technical expertise or experience in bridge technology. IRC circulars on bridgemaintenance, which made occasional additions to its codes, went unread. Necessary visualinspections of the bridge were hampered by a lack of viewing platforms that would allowengineers to take a close look at the structure. The work of inspecting, maintaining, and repairingthe bridge was left to unqualified local labourers and their supervisors.

The IRCs codes, created to bring uniformity to civil engineering practices across the country,read like For Dummies guides; all an engineer needs to do is follow the written instructions.

For bridge maintenance, the codes suggest several kinds of inspections, including going


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underwater to check the bridges foundations, and non-destructive tests such as assessing bridgeloads. But an assistant engineer in Daman said that all bridge inspections during his time therewere only visual.

Parts of the inquiry report read like a bridges autopsy. Kochar noted that Freyssinet, a company

with no past experience of steel bridge repairs, was contracted to rehabilitate the bridge in2001. He found that drains on the bridges deck had been sealed. A PWD engineer testified that

the steel part of the bridge had not been painted between 1993 and 2001. Some steel componentswere so heavily corroded that they had lost three-fourths of their thickness.

I had not personally inspected the bridge at any time, DK Vaghela, who had been thesuperintending engineer at the local PWD, said. I had not carried out any inspection workduring the repairs and rehabilitation of the bridge from 1998 to 2001. Vaghela claimed to have

read the IRC code on bridge maintenance, but only after his retirement, and not while the bridgewas his to maintain. Vaghela could not say if the bridges vitals were being monitored: They

[his subordinates] used to tell me that they have done the work and I believed them. There is

however no record to show what inspection and maintenance work was done by them. In 2001,during the rehabilitation, he visited the bridge. I had generally walked over the bridge and hadseen from both abutments that the work which was done was satisfactory, he said.

Kocharfound all of this preposterous. Even the expenses incurred appear to be suspicious as nosupporting documents and records are brought on record, the justice wrote, looking ataccounts related to the bridge. In the margins of his personal copies of witness testimonies,which I obtained through the Right to Information Act, he frequently wrote absurd beside

underlined passages. He was disturbed by the local administrations belief that the IRC codes,

created to ensure a common standard of knowledge among engineers, were simply suggestions.He inferred from the PWD engineers testimony that they had exercised their discretion.

Kochar was livid: those engineers who admittedly do not know even the elements of bridgeengineering or technology cannot have the audacity to say that they are not bound by theprescribed guidelines on the very subject of which they are admittedly ignorant. And how cananyone exercise his discretion if he does not know the subject in question itself? Discretionpresumes possession of at least basic average acquaintance with the subject. (After an informalconversation about the incident, Kochar declined to be interviewed for this story.)

Left to themselves, the PWDs engineers made up their own rules about how things ought tobedone. This dismayed Kochar. You couldnt possibly have engineers operating on improvised

guidelines when there were well-established ones available. It raised an unsettling question: werethere other officials, in other parts of the country, also doing things their own way?

Anger bubbled through Kochars report. He believed the PWDs officials were evasive. When

the attorney for the department questioned Fadras recollection of the afternoons events during

hearings, Kochar shushed him, according to Fadra. He disdained the departments practices, andall but declared the PWD workers unfit for duty. They chose to confine themselves in dark

corners of [Daman] on a strange pretext that there was only one bridge in their territory and thatthere was no necessity for them to acquire any knowledge to maintain the bridge. The PWDowned the bridge, he wrote, but had left it in the hands of contractors and consultants, and


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finally to its fate. He was particularly moved by the bridge's young victims. They were eagerto fill their hungry bellies as they ran out of school, he wrote. Nothing was left for their

parents, who awaited their children ... with meals ready for their little dear ones.

The inquiry hinged some of its technical conclusions on a report by V Kalyanaraman, a retired

professor at IIT Chennai. He had reached Daman within four days of the collapse, and saw thebridge lying broken, submerged in the toxic water. My first thought, he recently told me, washow could my profession do this to so many people?

ITS A VERY VERY DIFFICULT THING.ITS NOT A JOKE.

THE CHIEF ENGINEER OF BRIDGES works in office 332, deep in the heart of the Ministryof Road Transport and Highways on Parliament Street in New Delhi. Arun Pathak is about sixfeet tall, and he towers over the diminutive staff in the ministrys pallid corridors.

Pathak, who served in 12 ministries before becoming chief engineer in 2012, is the man whosigns off on any decision regarding the ministrys bridges. He did not know how many bridgeshe was responsible for. In total, most probably about 20,000-odd bridges are there, he told me.We dont have the exact figure, but its approximately 20,000. Nor did he know the conditionof the bridges under his purview. We are dependent on the state PWDs, he said. They used to

send us data. Asked if the information was current, he replied, Their functioning is not up to

the mark. If they are efficient, then we will get the data. But it did not seem as if any effort hadbeen made to encourage the collection of that data. I asked Pathak if there was any incentive forPWD engineers to send in bridge reports regularly, and he said, The only incentive is that we

give more funds to states where bridges are working properly and from where we are getting

data. Because he doesnt have up-to-date, comprehensive information, Pathak doesnt knowhow many bridgesor which onesare on the verge of failure. No one does.

On top of the lack of data, the roads ministry has a shortage of qualified staff. On the day Ivisited Pathaks office, a stack of new bridge proposals about 18 inches high lay on his desk. He

pulled one bound proposal out from the pile and flipped it open to a page filled with calculations.Just see this, he said. The amount of work thatsinvolved is surprising. He said that twopeople under him helped him with the proposals. Eight people are required. I am functioning

with one superintending engineer and one assistant executive engineer. Theres a constraint of

staff. Each and every drawing has to be seen. This has to be seenhe flipped a pagethis hasto be examinedand then another. Its a very very difficult thing. Its not a joke.

The person inspecting the bridge should be an expert. He should know what he has to see,

Alok Bhowmick, the managing director of B&S Engineering Consultants, told me. He providedan example: You have seen bridge railings on expansion joints. Now, at the expansion joints,

you see two posts. If the two posts are like thishe imitated a misalignment with his handsit gives you an indication that one of the foundations has settled. How do you measure howmuch it has settled? If you know the span, youll know how much it has settled. Although this is

common sense, you should know what to look at. It is not a job that can be done by any Tom,


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Dick and Harry just because hes a civil engineer, just because hes a structural engineer. If its a

river bridge, he will not know whether there is a scour problem or not. How do you decipher theflood level? You have to look around, and where you see bushes, thats the flood level. To knowall this, you need to be a specialist.

The Bridge Inspectors Reference Manual, published by the IRC, was written not for specialists,but for people whose knowledge of bridge engineering is not highly developed. The manuals

authors recognised that bridge inspectors in India were not qualified engineers, and sought tocreate a guide that would allow inspectors to conduct routine inspections on common bridges.Within minutes of reading its instructions, I learned how to identify the corrosion of zinc paint(white spots appear on the surface), and how to tell if concrete was under chemical attack (thesurface of concrete starts to feel soft and slippery, and develops small hollows). Being a bridgeinspector doesnt require knowing how to construct a bridge. It isnt complex. It involvesfollowing a checklist written in simple English and recording signs of danger. The list, providedin the manuals last pages, requires inspectors totick boxes: Steel corrosion - Problem: yes/no.How bad?: not so bad/bad/very bad. How much?: not much/some/a lot. On occasion, if the

ticked boxes point to serious problems, theres space for an explanation.

In a maintenance structure riddled with vulnerabilities from rules to personnel, the mostunexpected one exposed by the Daman inquiry was this: engineers charged with protecting thebridge didnt even read manuals or IRC circulars published to help them maintain bridges. I did

not try to find out the bridge history or the maintenance of the bridge, SC Hiremath, theformer superintending engineer, said. I am also not aware of the bridge check list to bemaintained for a bridge. I am not aware of the format of the inspection report of a bridge. I havenot seen at any time any handbook relating to the maintenance of the bridge. Theres no way to

know whether these lax practices at Damans PWD were an anomaly or the normbut thatsprecisely the point: the very absence of this information should be forewarning enough.

To help fill in the missing data from non-existent manual bridge inspections, Pathak wants toimplement a bridge management system. He said the ministry planned to engage a consultant toreport back on the condition of its bridges. A proposalcost unknownis already there for abridge management system, Pathak said. The consultant will examine each and every bridge inthe country, and will inventorise the bridges: when it was constructed, what its span is. It will betotally computerised. (Pathak isnt the only one with such plans; there are a bevy of newproposals for automated bridge management systems. Wakchaure, of the Indian Academy ofHighway Engineers, has one, and the Central Road Research Institute is believed to bedeveloping one, too.)

But attempts to implement automated systems to manage Indias bridges have been made before,and they all foundered upon the same problem: the issue wasnt so much the bridges as the

people who were supposed to take care of them. In 1996, as part of a National Highways projectsupported by a World Bank loan, the roads ministry commissioned a study for a bridgemanagement system. The systemessentially a software database operated by technicians whohad to be hired and trainedwould assemble data on the condition of bridges, predict howbridges would deteriorate, plan maintenance and repairs, and predict the costs necessary to keepbridges functional.


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The ministry asked OSullivan & Graham Ltd (OSGL), a British firm, to recommend software.

When they arrived in India, OSGLs John Cox and Stephen Matthews found that the regularmaintenance that bridges required was not a priority for PWDs. When funds were released formaintenance, the money was inevitably for bridges in critical condition. What the ministrywanted was a crystal ball; the ideal software package had to divine how long its bridges would

last if they were left unattended.

Given Indias varied climate conditions and geography, the consultants recommended a

Canadian bridge management system called BRIDGIT. They fed BRIDGIT data on every bridgeunder the ministrys purview. The only comprehensive data set, which included measurements

and conditions for several thousand bridges, was then seven years old. BRIDGIT let them knowthat the data was untrustworthy. The software checked their inputs for integrity, and judged thata large proportion of the bridge records were found to contain errors or omissions, Cox andMatthews wrote. BRIDGIT, mighty as it was, could predict the future, but only if the PWDs'engineers maintained accurate records first.

NK Sinha, who was the director general for roads in the ministry when OSGL recommendedBRIDGIT, seemed surprised when I asked him about the system. He said that few people in theministry knew about it. That software would somehow, after some years, give us the expectantlife of a bridge, and where it needed an intervention. That was the aim. But not initially. First wehad to fill in the data. That was the trick. That is still the trick, he said, smiling. Supposing you

inspect one bridge today, and put in its deficiencies and what actions you have taken, and yourepeat the same thing next yearultimately the software picks up that if such and such conditionhappens, the bridge is about to collapse. Or, if you take these measures, you can prolong its life.

I had the software installed on one computer which was kept under the close watch of one chiefengineer, Sinha continued. I told him he was in charge, and he got transferred, andtransfer

transfer transferwe dont know where that computer is, and where the program is.

Powerful software could only supplement a strong organisation, not fix a broken one; Cox andMatthews concluded that the software couldnt resolve the weaknesses in Indian bridge

maintenance. It became clear at a very early stage in the project that the main issues were of aninstitutional nature, they wrote. Previous experience suggested that bridge management

software would serve no useful purpose without an effective bridge management organisationwith well defined responsibilities. (When I contacted him in February, Matthews declined to beinterviewed for this story, but he wrote to me in an email after I told him about the failure inDaman, Gravity is an unforgiving task master, and unfortunately the skills of civil engineers inmanaging its effects are too often taken for granted.)

Cox and Matthews argued that there was a shortage of qualified bridge inspectors. Bridgeinspectors were expected to be competent qualified engineers, according to guidelines

published by the IRC in 1996, but there was no specific statement of the necessary qualifications.Engineers, like other government employees, were frequently reassigned, and their duties werespread across vastly different specialisations. Bridge engineers were made to work on publicbuildings or on highways, Cox and Matthews wrote years later in a paper describing their


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assignment. Conversely, engineers who understood roads and sewers were assigned to thespecialised task of inspecting and maintaining bridges.

The IRC wanted bridge inspectors with diplomas and degrees, Sinha told me. I said, no, they

should simply be school graduates who know math. When I asked Pathak, the chief engineer of

bridges, about BRIDGIT, he said he wasnt aware of it. He was keener to discuss the merits ofhis proposed new system. The PWDs will have to give the data twice a year, he said. Theywill have to do a visual inspection twice a year for five years.

The likelihood of receiving this information is slim. No department has data, Bhowmick toldme. And even if they did, they wouldnt give it to you, simply because they dont have updated

information. They arent keeping it the way it is supposed to be done. When Bhowmick and Imet in March, B&S, which is among the firms approved to perform inspections for privatetransporters on the ministrys bridges, had dispatched a few of its employees to visually inspect,

for a hydraulic trailer client, 40 bridges along an 800-kilometre-long stretch of highway.Assignments of this kind were growing increasingly common, he said.

A 2010 report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on the government of Goa,which included an audit of that states PWD, suggests that the neglect displayedby the engineersin Daman may not have been unique. The CAG report noted the Goa PWD had a lack ofmaintenance records, and that scrutiny of the records revealed that the [PWD] had not

maintained history sheets of the assets to record the details of maintenance works carried outsuch as the dates of works carried out, the nature of works done, expenditure incurred etc. The

auditor generals comment wasnt very different from an observation Justice Kochar made

during his inquiry. Kochar wrote that the Daman PWD had placed on record a bunch of so-called correspondence to show bridge maintenance from 1983 to 2000. This bunch of lettersmerely show that all bearings/unishears etc. are greased and nut bolts are tightened, when the

procedure as prescribed by various maintenance manuals show that maintenance is not restrictedto greasing and tightening of nuts and bolts.

And yet, as of now, our fate is in the hands of similar engineers. They may be unused toinspecting bridges, or may have little time to do so. Nor are they required by law to maintainbridges. Perhaps they dont keep maintenance books, or, if they do, fill them with meaningless

dummy text. We dont know if senior engineers verify data collected about the structures by

subordinates. And for now, at least, we have no way to find out about any of this.

DONT GO THAT WAY.

EIGHT DAYS AFTER TAFSIR DIED, her first passport arrived. Fadra wanted to cancel it,but was told the process would be complicated. He held on to the booklet until it expired. TheDaman police took five years after the bridges collapse to file a chargesheet naming the PWDs

engineers. During that time, the Daman Ganga bridge was rebuilt, and it failed once again.


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(There were no fatalities.) After that, the permanent bridge that had been promised for over 20years finally began to take shape beside Fadras home.

A victims committee, formed after the bridge failure, had split into battling factions. TheMohammedans were excluded from news of the proceedings at the district sessions court,

Fadra told me, and he accused well-placed members of the victims committee of having softenedits stance in exchange for lucrative PWD contracts. Deepesh Tandel, the committee chief, agreedto speak with me, but when I reached Daman he did not answer my phone calls.

When I went there in early February, the criminal case had stalled. The judge hearing the matterat the sessions court had been transferred, and the new one was due to arrive by the end of themonth. Rana, the former superintending engineer, had successfully petitioned the Bombay HighCourt to be discharged from the case. His success had encouraged two more former PWDengineers to attempt the same thing. They said, just like Rana, theres no case against us, asource with knowledge of the legal proceedings told me. Now, unless the high court hears their

case, we wont be able to hear the case in Daman.

Kochars damning report had no bearing on the criminal case: Mario Lopes, the publicprosecutor, tried to introduce it as evidence in the case, but the court stated it could not beadmitted. Instead, the source said, Whatever the police has gathered will be used as evidence.

There is little optimism about the outcome of the case. The chargesheet filed by the police in2008 was under a section of the Indian Penal Code that carries a maximum punishment of twoyears imprisonment. By the time it arrived in court, the statute of limitations had lapsed. Thecourt returned the chargesheet and asked the cops to file a new one under a different sectionone in which the engineers could face a possible prison term of ten years. The case is nowdragging on, and theres no end in sight.

In Daman, the old bridge, washed away so many times, has returned repainted, with more piers.This is the bridges sixth instantiation in fewer than 80 years. It is painted a dull light green, and

its piers have already browned. Below the metal truss in the bridges middle is a pier that stopsshort of touching it.

I visited the bridge one evening as the light dimmed. It stands about 200 metres from the NaniDaman administration. To get there, I turned right on the upper end of the administration road,and walked past a bar called Bridge Corner, and the Hanuman temple near it. Ornate metalbarricades with slim openings framed by barbed wire restricted access to the bridge, allowingonly pedestrians to pass. A couple of men leaned on its railings while old songs played on aradio. Walkers owned the bridge now that vehicles could no longer make use of it. Still, thebridge creaked and vibrated with age. The street lamps were shattered, and their bulbs weregone. Paint peeled in clusters, exposing the material beneath. Rust marked the metal girders andthe pathway. Closer to Moti Daman, the bridges tar had hardened in smooth lumps three inches

high.


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Losing my bearings in Moti Daman on another afternoon, I asked an official at the PollutionControl Board the nearest way to cross the river. Take the big bridge, she said, referring to thenew one, which was finally opened in 2009.

What about the pedestrian bridge? I asked.

Dont go that way.

Why?

She repeated her suggestion more firmly. I asked if there were superstitions about the bridge.No, nothing like that, she told me. We have been advised not to use that bridge. I dont know

why.

Rahul Bhatia is a Staff Writer at The Caravan.

"DON'T BURY THEM IN THE MORNING"

IT WAS ALMOST LUNCHTIME when the school kids made a run for it. A blur of red-and-grey chequered uniforms, they were hoisted onto scooters and crammed into autos parked in thelight rain outside Our Lady of Fatima Convent High School. The school, and the moss-tingedPortuguese fort it sat in, shone in the August drizzle. A wet road led down to a breach in theforts walls, beyond which the land swelled to a crest over a muddy river. On this side was Moti

Daman, where the districts administrative offices were sheltered within the forts stoneramparts. On the other side, the northern side, were Nani Damans liquor stores, beaches, and

hotels. Together, these two halves formed the tranquil seaside town of Daman, held fast by thetowns only bridge, a workaday construction 20 years old.

Fakir Mohammad Fadra, a wiry cable-service operator with a purposeful walk, lived at theeastern end of the Nani Daman promenade. A thicket of mangroves obscured the view of thebridge from the front door of his house, but the Daman Ganga River, only feet away, he couldsee just fineand on that day in the summer of 2003, the river looked swollen, as it often didwhen officials at the dam upstream released water. He couldnt help keeping watch. Twice in hislifetime the river had burst its banks, forcing the towns residents onto rooftops for airdroppedsupplies.

It was nearly 1.30 pmtime for his four children and four nieces to return from school to thehome he shared with the families of his brother and sister. The Fadras were old faces in the smalltown of 36,000; Daman knew Fadra as Baba, and after all this time, it recognised him by noother name. (Fakir who? Oh, Baba!) Residents on both sides of the river subscribed to hiscable television service. He had lately begun to feel that goons had overrun the trade, and hadhired a hefty young man to help him run the servicethe muscle to Fadras lean frame. Theprevious year, his father, Captain Nizamuddin Fadra, had died from prostate cancer after a longand rich life lived mostly on the sea. Towards the end, the captain told his wife to make sure she


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looked after their 14-year-old granddaughter Tafsir, one of Fadras daughters, whom they bothadored.

That day, she didnt want to go to school, Fadra told me when I visited his home. Tafsir smiled

down from a studio photograph on a shelf in his sitting room. She loved school, and he couldnt

remember her missing a day. But that morning, Tafsir asked her parents if she could stay at homeinstead. The request was so unusual that they agreed. Then Tafsir changed her mind, as teenagersdo, and left. She was excited, Fadra remembered: she had always wanted to go to LondonFadra had a brother in Gloucesterand they had just applied for her first passport. Abba, whenI go to London, Ill send you money back, she told him.

When he realised the time, the rickshaw driver who picked up the Fadra children each day putdown his afternoon drink at a bar by the bridge, and hurried to Our Lady of Fatima. The kidswere already walking home when he met them outside the school. Youre always late. Were

not getting in, they told the driver. So he turned the auto back toward Nani Daman, driving

carefully over the bridge between students on foot, the narrow structure vibrating beneath them.

Constable Kinjalkumar Patel, on traffic signal duty, had stopped vehicles at Nani Daman so thatpeople coming from the schools direction could cross the bridge. The structure was built for asmaller Daman: at three-and-a-half metres, it wasnt wide enough to let two small cars pass eachother. As Patel directed traffic, the rickshaw Fadra had sent to fetch the kids went by, empty. Afew more approached. One carried two kids and Mrs Pandya, one of the schools languageteachers. The other had 10 young passengers. Motorcycles and scooters zipped across thebridges puddled surface.

Bharat Patel, a young math teacher, carried test papers to grade at home as he crossed on foot.He was a young gentleman, Pandya said. Very active, very good. He would have been home

sooner, but had forgotten the papers at Our Lady of Fatima, and had turned back to retrieve them.Pooja Pathak, a seventh-graderand Pandyas niecewas also walking across the bridge. Sheliked my teaching. In the morning Pooja told me, Maami, I want to come home and study [with

you], Pandya said. Then there were the eight Fadra cousins, with Fadras son, Aiyaz, up to

mischief: he kicked up rainwater on the bridge at his pigtailed sisters and cousins. Catch himand beat him! they shouted, as his sisters Uzma and Tehzeeb ran madly behind him. Tafsir heldback from chasing her brother to chat with her cousins Sumaiya, Afza, Sana and Farheen. It wasafternoon now, and fishing boats bobbed in the whippy river below the long, crowded bridge.

JUST AFTER 1.30 PM, as Pandya and two children motored in a rickshaw past pier fivethesupport closest to Nani Damana strained joint over the pier snapped. Pandya heard a loudbang, and then the earth shifted. Dont ask me about it, she told me. I still hear it.

The bridges tensive bonds were unravelling. Several tons of steel and asphalt yanked in oppositedirections. The rickshaw Pandya was in lurched backward, its nose lifting toward the sky, andthe two children beside her tumbled out onto the road. The rickshaw slammed back down. Frominside, she reached out for the bridge railing, while the driver scrambled over the bridges wetsurface to catch both children. Pandya didnt know what was going on, but the section they were

on had first broken at the pier, and almost immediately at the abutment, where the bridge met the


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land. She heard children in the water below, screaming for help. Holding on was hard enough,she told me, and she hadnt dared turn around to look at them. Within minutes, fishermen

approached her in their rocking boats, and told her to jump in, but she gripped the railing inwhite-knuckled terror.

Leena Fegade, a nine-year-old, had been crossing the bridge on foot beside her mother. Theywere behind Pandyas rickshaw, and nearly across the river, when the bridge plunged beneaththeir feet. On her way down, Leena managed to catch hold of a rod pegged to the bridge. Shelooked about in panic, but her mother had disappeared. The fishermen who were in the water told me to leave the rod and jump in, she later told the police. Leena let go and fell down intothe water; the fishermen plucked her out and left her on the rivers north bank.

When the bridges first joint split, the strain led to more fractures. The span broke in four places,

forming a W-shaped heap of metal. As they fell, Sharda, Leenas mother, lost hold of herdaughters hand. Children around her were drowning. She didnt know where Leena was. She

couldnt move. Something had pinned her leg underwater. Whatever was holding her down was

heavy, so the fishermen who came to rescue her had to pull her out of the river with a force thatdislocated her leg, leaving her in agony. They took her to shore, where she found Leena amongthe other survivors.

Fadra was at home when he heard the noise and the human roar that followed. He ran past thenarrow homes of fishermen that lined the promenade, towards the bridge. There he saw hischildren Aiyaz and Tehzeeb standing about a dozen metres from the abutment, behind a parkedcar. His daughter Uzma was nearby, but Fadra didnt notice her. What happened? heremembered asking Tehzeeb. Where is Uzma and everyone else? Tehzeeb saw the disaster, and

she couldnt say anything, Fadra told me. Aiyaz said that the bridge broke with them in themiddle.

Fadra didnt wait. He dove into the river. Taut mooring ropes that held fishing boats in high tidetore skin from his arms. As he swam, he noticed Pandyawho had once been his teacherstanding on a tilted section of the broken bridge. She waved at him. A little further, he felt thesensation of an electrical current. Over time, the bridge had acquired dead load in the form ofnew power lines, telephone wires and water pipes that ran along its length and, as he passed by,Fadra thought that the severed wires were electrifying the water. They turned off the electricitylater, he told me. He climbed out of the river at pier five, and onto a broken stretch of thebridge. From there he pressed forward to the school to look for his daughters and nieces, butcouldnt find them. He returned to the bridge and surveyed the damage, and now the terriblethought he had resisted all along bore down on him: his brother had lost all three daughters, andhis sister, whose husband had died years earlier, had now lost her only child; two of his ownchildren were gone. He was suddenly so tired.

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