‘They usually form when water or sewage leaks down the road’
A portion of busy JC Road near Rabindra Kalakshetra collapsed on Thursday morning, resulting in a sinkhole about eight feet deep and a few feet wide. Though the sinkhole was big enough to cause accidents, luckily no incident happened as the road collapsed due to no traffic.
“If it had happened even a few hours later, there would have been bumper-to-bumper traffic, which could have led to accidents,” said Mutturaj, an employee of a private firm who hits the road every day.
A large part of the road was blocked as earth movers were brought in to dig the pit further so that it could be refilled. Due to this, traffic on the busy JC Road came to a standstill for almost the entire day, due to which the Central Business District was jammed.
BBMP chief engineer (road infrastructure) BS Prahlad said the sinkhole was formed due to soil erosion from below the road surface. “Such sinkholes usually form when water or sewage leaks down the road. With excessive seepage, water carries soil particles to the lowest level, creating a cavity beneath the road surface. If utility lines are punctured, soil enters the pipeline and the amount of sub-soil is reduced, which also creates cavities,” he explained.
He said that in Bengaluru, horizontal drilling to lay optical fiber cables and basecom power lines often punctures water and sewage lines under the road. “Other reasons for such sinkholes can be if an old well is closed or some excavation work has been done nearby. But in this case we have almost ruled out these reasons.
BBMP has started the work of filling the sinkhole. Shri Prahlad said, “The point of leakage will be identified and addressed, after which the sinkhole will be filled with sand, boulders, wet mix macadum which has good drainage properties and will be laid layer by layer and will be compressed.”
Recently, the ruling party BJP MLAs have also strongly criticized the condition of the city’s roads. Mahadevapura MLA Arvind Limbavali had recently raised the issue in the ongoing winter session of the Karnataka Legislature in Belagavi and said that there was no coordination between the agencies. He argued that this is having a direct adverse effect on the condition of the roads. In September, a major sinkhole was built on Tannery Road due to tunneling work by Namma Metro. Thankfully no one was hurt in that incident too.