Manhole tragedy: GHMC’s callousness comes to fore

HYDERABAD:  Even as the search for Navalli Anantaiah continued for the fifth day on Saturday, the insensitivity of civic authorities over maintaining the drainage network has come as a shocker to the general public and human right activists alike.

Water from a 600 mm diameter stormwater drain (SWD) at LB Nagar acted as flood canal and washed away Anantaiah after he fell into the 10-ft deep manhole on August 3. Officials said the water velocity was so high that it could wash away anything coming its way. The other victim, Butla Shiva's body was recovered since his shirt got stuck to the ladder inside the manhole.

According to highly placed sources, due to the absence of sewerage network in the LB Nagar zone, the trunk main sewer line from about 500 colonies adjacent to BN Reddy Nagar were connected to the storm water drain.

According to sources, the GHMC finalising desilting tenders itself was in violation of rules. The authorities did not inform the contractor about the presence of sewer flow into the SWD which contains harmful methane gas. As soon as Shiva entered the drain through the manhole, he fell unconscious inhaling the hazardous methane gas.

When Anantaiah tried to rescue Shiva, he too fell unconscious after inhaling methane and fell into the manhole. Since the stormwater drain was functioning on a self-cleaning velocity mechanism, Anantaiah was immediately washed away. As the desilting works were carried out, the upstream storm water drained the water velocity way ahead than 0.6 metres per second.

Sources said the civic authorities had been carrying out desilting works aggressively on the upstream network to ensure free flow of water. Since the SWD was completely constructed on a flow gravity system, the sewer water flew at least 8 metre per second once the blockage was removed on the upstream network. This velocity would wash away anything that comes its way as the sewer would gush with a high velocity.  

Sources said Anantaiah's body might have been washed away into the Pasimamula Cheruvu which is the only outlet from BN Reddy. They said there was a delay in rescue operations. Though corporation authorities were alerted about the incident at 11 pm on August 3, they did not turn up till morning of August 4. The rescue vehicles too reached at around 10: 30 am on August 4 which was too late to recover the body. 

This apart, the GHMC authorities who were monitoring the works did not instruct the contract agency and laborers to conduct a methane gas test prior to entering the manhole even during the day. The authorities did not provide any safety gear to the labourers who were supposed to enter only one hour after opening the manhole. These key norms were ignored by the corporation, but in turn, it was blaming the laborers for entering into the manhole during the night time that too for desilting works.

Meanwhile, the search operation continued on the fifth consecutive day. Deputy commissioner A. Maruthi Diwakar told this newspaper that the corporation would continue the search operations even on Sunday and it would be stopped only after the instructions of higher authorities.