Chennai is in for more major disasters like the June 28 collapse of an under-construction multi-storeyed building at Porur which claimed 61 lives and the crash of a high rise wall leading to the death of 11 workers in another city suburb last week. Saturday saw a 118-year-old heritage building housing the State Bank of India getting destroyed in a major fire due to electrical short circuit.
The fire in the SBI office building came just hours after a member of the Madras High Court appointed high power monitoring committee opening up to The Pioneer about the safety of more than 2,000 high rise buildings in the city. “There are thousands of multi-storeyed buildings in Chennai and suburbs that have violated development control regulations. We cannot give any assurance about the safety of these 2,000 buildings as violations pertain to failure to abide by the norms for fire safety, floor space index and building elevation,” said MG Devasahayam, a former IAS officer and member of the MHC appointed high power monitoring committee to go into the details of violations by builders.
Devasahayam was highly critical of the fire safety standards being followed by buildings in the commercial district T Nagar in Chennai housing hundreds of illegal and unsafe buildings. “Even a small fire could lead to major catastrophe in this part of the city. Thousands of men and women work in clumsy halls in these buildings which do not have any kind of safety standards,” he said.
Though the Government has been alerted about the state of affairs way back in 2009 itself, no action has been taken by the authorities concerned. A highly placed source in the State Secretariat said that the building near Porur which collapsed on June 28 resulting in 61 deaths, was not supposed to come in that particular spot. “Though the law mandates that the road leading to multi storeyed buildings should have a minimum width of 18 metres, it has been found that the road leading to the particular building had only 16 metres width. The law was amended to suit the particular building,” he said. The official disclosed that an investigation should be ordered into how Government orders were issued facilitating the construction of the building in spite of the fact that the road hadn’t the necessary width.