AHMEDABAD: At least 132 people died in India when a colonial-era pedestrian bridge packed with revellers collapsed into the river below, police said Monday.
Authorities said nearly 500 people were celebrating the last day of the Diwali festival on and around the nearly 150-year-old suspension bridge in Morbi when supporting cables snapped after dark on Sunday.
CCTV footage showed the structure in the western state of Gujarat swaying – with a few people apparently deliberately rocking it – before it suddenly gave way.
The walkway and one fence crashed into the river, leaving the other side dangling in mid-air and hundreds of people in the water.
“I saw the bridge collapse before my eyes,“ said one witness who worked all night on rescue efforts, without giving his name.
“It was traumatic when a woman showed me a photo of her daughter and asked if I had rescued her. I could not tell her that her daughter had died.”
Another witness named Supran said the bridge was “jam-packed”.
“The cables snapped and the bridge came down in a split second. People fell on each other and into the river,“ he told local media.
News reports showed footage of people clinging onto the twisted remains of the bridge or trying to swim to safety in the dark.
Most Indians cannot swim and another Morbi resident, Ranjanbhai Patel, said he helped pull out those who had been able to reach the banks.
“As most of the people had fallen into the river, we were not able to save them,“ he said.
Senior police official Ashok Kumar Yadav told AFP on Monday morning that the death toll stood at 132.
Sources said that most of the victims were women and children.
One local MP, Kalyanji Kundariya, told media he had lost 12 family members in the accident, including five children.
The bridge over the Machchhu river, a popular tourist spot, had only reopened several days earlier for the local Gujarati New Year holiday after months of repairs.
‘No certificate’
The suspension bridge, 233 metres (764 feet) long and 1.5 metres wide, was inaugurated in 1880 by the British colonial authorities and made with materials shipped from England, reports said.
Broadcaster NDTV reported that it reopened on Wednesday after seven months of repairs despite not having a safety certificate, and that video footage from Saturday showed it swaying wildly.
Authorities quickly launched a rescue operation following the collapse, with boats and divers deployed to search for missing people late into the night.
Dozens of soldiers from the Indian Army and Navy were also called for the rescue operation.
Authorities were planning to stop water supply to the river from the nearby check dam and use pumps to de-water the river to speed up the search operation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was touring his home state of Gujarat at the time, announced compensation for those killed and injured in the accident.
Modi “sought urgent mobilisation of teams for rescue (operations)”, his office tweeted.
“He has asked that the situation be closely and continuously monitored, and (for authorities to) extend all possible help to those affected.”
The Gujarat government on its official website describes the bridge as “an engineering marvel built at the turn of the century”.
Accidents from old and poorly maintained infrastructure including bridges are common in India.
In 2016 the collapse of a flyover onto a busy street in the eastern city of Kolkata killed at least 26 people.
In 2011 at least 32 people were killed when a bridge packed with festival crowds collapsed near the hill town of Darjeeling in India’s northeast.
Less than a week later around 30 people were killed when a footbridge over a river in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh collapsed.
In 2006 at least 34 people were killed when a 150-year-old bridge collapsed on a passenger train in the railway station in the eastern state of Bihar. – AFP
