Chennai: Cracks caused by metro tunneling scare Chintadripet residents
Cracks were caused by the second TBM that has covered 320 of the total 1,040 metres
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-06-14 06:45 GMT
Chennai: Life can be hell if one were to live under a crumbling roof; even worse, if the house was bought with one’s lifetime savings. When it is a mixture of both, the less said the better. This inescapable fear is what several residents of Ayya Mudali Street in Chintadripet are living with since Friday evening when an ongoing metro rail tunneling work shook their foundations. And it did not stop there. The house interiors have developed cracks wide enough to give the impression of a building ‘spared’ by a minor quake.
Area resident Kasi Shah, whose shop developed cracks overnight, says, “We have been feeling the tremors caused by the tunneling works for a week now. None paid heed to our complaints. Now, wide cracks have emerged.” “Ours is a rented building. We are doing garland business since 1970s here. Cracks started appearing around 7 pm last night. I am in charge of the two-storied building. Initially, there were only mild cracks. I closed the shop and left. When I opened it in the morning, I found one-inch wide cracks. A few other buildings in the neighbourhood had also developed cracks,” he said.
His neighbour Sudarshanam, whose building had sunk by a few inches has been moved to a hotel in Egmore. Another area resident Sekar says, “We have been feeling the vibrations caused by the tunneling machines for a while, but last evening’s vibrations were scary. It was like tremors caused by a quake. All of us rushed out of the house. We stayed on the road for over an hour. Couple of low level CMRL officers turned up, but they offered no help,” he said.
Kasi Shah rued that the neighbours had complained to lower level officials, who had dismissed it as usual tunneling impact. Shah’s complaint was not untrue considering the statement of CMRL public relation manager Ilanthirayan who said; “A few buildings have developed cracks. One of them was very old and weak. We have moved the inhabitants to a hotel in Egmore.”
The cost of repair will be borne by Afcons India Limited, which executes the work along with a Russia-based foreign company that does the actual tunneling work there, he said adding that the TBM’s have been temporarily stopped. “Damage will be assessed and the building will be completely repaired once the TBM crosses the area,” Ilanthirayan said.
Friday’s was among a long list of damages caused by CMRL tunneling, which hit the headlines even more prominently when cracks emerged in the landmark LIC building on Anna salai, CSI Wesley Church and Lutheran Church in Mannadi earlier.