Jhulto pul of Morbi, Gujarat
230m long X 1.25m wide old bridge 15m over the river Machchu.
Built by Local Maharaja: Waghi Thakore in 1879 (143 years old) to connect two palaces Darbardadh & Nazarbagh(currently an engg college Lukhdhiriji engg college)
The original capacity was 15 people at once for pedestrian traffic, later modified by the local municipality to 125 person max.
The accident took place on 30th Oct’22 (6:40 pm) Lives lost: 135 persons
This much detail is good enough to take the discussion further.
Wild animals follow nature’s mandate very clearly and therefore Cheetah ( a prominent wild animal) also follows the same rule of nature.
It never sits on a branch of a tree, rather it lies on a branch while waiting for its prey to come.
It avoids sitting lest it is seen by its hunting targets.
So the concept of UDL (uniformly distributed load) is perceptualized by a wild animal, which we humans don’t understand in 2022.
In our house, we regularly use cloth hanging string to dry clothes, and if a wet cloth/ towel is kept at the center of the string between its two support, it will take a shape of a triangle. Now if more wet clothes/ towels are kept touching one another or the same wet towel is spread across the length it will take a shape of a curve. The engineer will understand this is the shape of the bending moment.
This above analogy nature taught to the animal world but failed to teach us.
So excessive load in a suspended structure like Juhltopul will cause a catastrophe is well understood in the theory of mechanics.
So failure primarily occurred due to excessive loading at the midpoint
Secondly, unruly crowd-induced vibration amplifying the static dead load and live load on the pull enhanced the chances of collapse further
Thirdly bridges are always designed with moving & rolling loads but not for static loads beyond capacity for a long time with huge induced sway.
So all these cumulatively collapsed the bridge.
Failure Details
Failure 1 : The maintenance team neglected thorough maintenance due to a myopic vision of not achieving enhanced service life
Failure 2 : Ticket issued more than its capacity and no plan to schedule the visit in the group in a pre-decided time slot
Failure 3 : SOP (by designer) is not documented and lucidly translated down to the operating team (Pvt party)
Failure 4 : Safety pep talk not happening before every shift beginning to bring in more safety awareness for a century-old structure
Failure 5 : Local govt body failed to adhere to procedural safety audit before opening up the structure to the public
Failure 6 : Old structures across India never go through any honest audit process to declare safe or unsafe for public use
Failure 7 : Indian institute of bridge engineers is not used by any govt agency to avoid such incidents, no plans yet
