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| Tiruchi Kollidam steel bridge, deccanherald.com |
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| Tiruchi Kollidam steel bridge, timesofindia.indiatimes.com |
Since India's independence, we have kept losing countless colonial heritage buildings, bungalows, Dak houses, clock towers, road and railway bridges. Besides contributing factors like time, aging, climatic changes, lack of maintenance, the primary reason was official apathy. In a scenario like this the onus is on the .politicians resenting particular areas who should see to it such structures, etc., of by-gone time have to be preserved to keep the historic connectivity.
That a portion of a 90-year-old historical steel bridge across Kollidam river that connects Srirangam island with mainland Tiruchirapalli, collapsed and washed away in the floods of August 2018 is yet another sad story. This British-era bridge was the lifeline of this city for a long period connecting No 1 Tollgate in the mainland and Srirangam. It was the main route for Salem and Chennai bound vehicles. Instead of abandoning it in 2016, had the state govt, continued to maintain the steel bridge periodically, this tragic breakup of a part of the bridge would not have happened. The collapse (18th and 19th piers went down) was imminent as cracks had been developed in some places over a period of time. Apparently, the British used special cast -iron steel for the bridge for extra strength. The bridge corroded due to poor maintenance, according to local residents
When the collapse occurred around 1 am about 1.5 lakh cuisses of water was flowing in the Kollidam river. During the monsoon season that year heavy rains in the Kodaku area of Karnataka caused severe flooding and damages to the building near the river there.
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| Steel bridge across Kollidam, Tiruchi to be demolished. thehindu.com |
When the catchment area of the Cauvery in Karnataka (Kodaku) receives lots of rain during the SW monsoon (June to early Sept.) excess water coming here is diverted into the Kollidam river, a tributary of river Cauvery and branches out from the main river in Mukkombu in Tiruchirapalli. The river was in spate and a large portions of steel bridge broke lose and fell into the raging water. The crux of the matter is when a new bridge was opened up roughly 15 meter away for traffic in February 2016, that month on the 792-metre-long steel bridge was left abandoned for good.
Under the British Raj, the work on the bridge with 24 spans took roughly four years and completed in 1928. It replaced a pre-existing brick-arched masonry bridge that was washed away in the floods then.
In February 2019 the TN Govt. took a major decision to demolish the the remaining old steel-girder bridge. I wish the govt. had taken steps to preserve the remaining bridge as a vestige of colonial heritage bridge in this part of Tiruchi.
https://www.change.org/p/the-chief-minister-save-the-century-old-kollidam-steel-bridge
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/british-era-steel-bridge-688264.html
