Low-quality soil, faulty design and inadequate protection measures in piling works led to the subsidence at a construction site in the city's Nakhalpara on Saturday, assessed an expert team from Buet.
Visiting the site yesterday, the team comprised of civil engineering experts Prof AMM Shafiullah and Prof Syed Fakhrul Ameen tried to ascertain the causes behind the incident.
Islamic Trading Consortium Ltd was doing the piling to build a basement car park for a proposed 14-storey Impulse Medical College and Hospital.
But the retaining wall of the pit dug for the foundations crumbled resulting in the cave-in and collapse of three corrugated iron sheet houses in the early hours of Saturday.
Part of a road subsided and cracks appeared on the adjoining structures including two five-storey residential buildings.
Both of them pointed at the lack of adequate protection measures in shore piling (ground digging for the foundations) of the site.
Prof Ameen said apparently the design was flawed and pilings were weak. The basement is larger than the surface coverage of the building, he said, and it is risky.
Prof Shafiullah said the disaster wouldn't have happened if the design had been drawn up properly.
However, collapse risk for the five-storey building to the north of the site has reduced after the pit filling started. But another to the west is still in danger with vacuum underneath, he said.
According to Shafiullah, almost all the good-quality soil of the capital has been used up and only low-quality soil is left for construction.
Proper soil investigation, which is often ignored, is crucial for any construction, he said.
He suggested continuing filling up of the pit.
Meanwhile, army engineers have so far dumped 20 percent of estimated ten lakh cubic feet of earth till yesterday, Brigadier General Md Siddiqur Rahman Sarkar told The Daily Star.
Residents of at least 20 adjoining houses have to suffer miserably, as the utility connections got snapped with the collapse.
Source: The Daily Star (May 24, 2011)
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