By Admin 
Vadodara Bridge Collapse: So far 18 people have died due to the collapse of the bridge over the Mahisagar river in Vadodara, Gujarat. Officials said that search and rescue operations at the scene were stopped for one night. This campaign will start again in the morning on Friday (July 11), as two people are still missing.
In fact, on the morning of Wednesday (July 9), a part of a 40 -year -old bridge collapsed in Gambhira village near Padra town. There were many vehicles on the bridge, which fell into the river. This bridge connects the districts of Anand and Vadodara.
Campaign stopped due to boom in river
Vadodara District Magistrate Anil Dhelia informed that with the receipt of another body on Thursday night, the death toll in this accident has increased to 18. Two people are still missing. The rescue operation has been stopped due to the boom in the river and has been resumed on Friday morning.
The search and rescue operations were carried out throughout the day by at least 10 teams of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and other agencies.
CM Bhupendra Patel suspended four engineers
According to information received from the officials, some vehicles including a truck laden in the river are still stuck. Therefore, the district administration has used a ‘high performance truck’ of the Indian Army to take them out. Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, while taking action in connection with the bridge collapse, suspended four engineers of the state’s road and building department.
The suspended officers have been identified as Executive Engineer NM Nayakwala, Deputy Executive Engineer UC Patel and RT Patel and Assistant Engineer JV Shah. Apart from this, Chief Minister Patel, who is also handling the charge of road and building departments, had asked experts to prepare a report on the repair, inspection and quality check done on the bridge and on the basis of this report, it was decided to suspend the four engineers.
The rest of the bridges will also have quality checks
CM Patel has ordered the department officials to immediately inspect other bridges of the state in view of the incident. Meanwhile, the officials seem to protect themselves from the fact that a social worker drew attention to the poor condition of this bridge in August 2022.
Three years ago, information about the bridge was informed
After the bridge collapsed, a three -year -old audio clip is going viral on the social media platform in which social activist Lakhan Darbar, who runs the ‘Yuva Sena’ organization, can be heard by an officer of the road and building departments to repair the bridge or build a new bridge.
Lakhan Darbar told the officer that Vadodara District Panchayat member Harshad Singh Parmar also sent a letter to the department and expressed concern over the situation of the bridge built four decades ago. Significantly, when the local media spoke to Nayakwala, the executive engineer of Vadodara division of the department on Wednesday after the incident, he claimed that no major malfunction was found in the bridge during the inspection of the department.
The suspended engineer claimed- no malfunction in the bridge
Nayakwala, one of the four officers suspended by the Chief Minister, said, “There was no demand to close the bridge for the movement of vehicles.” According to our report, no major damage was found during our inspection. There was some problem in the bearings coat, but it was repaired only last year.
Since 2021 in Gujarat, there have been at least six major incidents of bridge collapse. In October 2022, 135 people died after the demolition of the British Jhula Bridge on the Machhu river in Morbi city.