Lack of information on city’s high-risk underground infrastructure poses a huge risk to lives of workers, residents

Twenty-one-year-old Muthurulandi had cut short his trip to his hometown of Peekankurichi in Ramanathapuram when he decided to get down at Vyttila after attending an Army recruitment camp on February 4 this year.

He wanted to join his cousins staying near Vyttila who were engaged by a contractor for road-cutting work. Muthurulandi had told them that a few days of earnings would be of immense help to his parents and four siblings, who were struggling to make ends meet. But, fate had something else in store for him. The youngster was electrocuted while carrying out piling work at a culvert along the Chalikkavattom-Kaniyaveli Road on the morning of February 6. Four of his family members sustained injuries in the incident.

The contractor claimed that he had no idea about the underground high-tension electric cable at the piling spot. Muthuralandi’s cousins had then told The Hindu that they had clearly asked the contractor whether the spot was free of electric cables.

The incident was a telling example of the lack of information on the city’s high-risk underground infrastructure. Almost two months later, digging work carried out by the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) at Palachuvadu Junction went wrong after it damaged a pipeline of the city gas project. On the morning of April 16, residents in the area woke up to huge flames rising up to the level of overhead electrical cables, following the leak.

Maps, sketches

A senior officer of the Department of Fire and Rescue Services, who was part of efforts to plug the leak, admitted that neither they nor the KSEB staff had any idea how to plug the leak. “The officials of the city gas project were alerted immediately. The leakage was plugged only after they arrived. It was another example of the lack of information in the form of maps or location sketches about the underground infrastructure in our city,” he said.

Disaster management

Interestingly, the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has no spatial information on what lies beneath the ground. A senior official admitted that they were clueless about the high-risk underground infrastructure in the city, exposing fault lines in its preparedness and mitigation strategies in an emergency.

The DDMA, entrusted with the preparation of the disaster management plan, lacked hazard and resource maps showing lines snaking beneath the city. The widening gap in the emergency response assumes significance after the Broadway fire on May 27 that had kept the city on tenterhooks for several hours.

City gas project

Senior officials in the district administration admitted that they had no resource maps or location sketches of the multi-crore city gas distribution network being implemented by IndianOil-Adani Gas Private Limited.

“We have now asked the KSEB authorities not to carry out any excavation activity along routes or stretches along the city gas network without informing the company authorities in advance. Any such work will require the green signal from them,” they said.

Inter-agency coordination

The lack of inter-agency coordination remains a problem as many government agencies are yet to have a common platform where the spatial information can be mapped scientifically. There have been several instances of pipelines of the Kerala Water Authroity (KWA) bursting while digging work was being carried out by agencies such as the KMRL and telecom companies.

The Kochi Corporation and the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) are also in the dark when asked about a map on utilities under their jurisdiction. Officials of the local bodies placed the blame on government agencies stating that it was their responsibility to have relevant information on underground infrastructure. Agencies such as the KWA still lacked sketches of precise location of its pipelines, they said.

GIS-aided maps

KWA Executive Engineer Mohammed Shafi said the proposal to prepare a three-dimensional Geographical Information System (GIS)-aided map of the pipelines in the city’s distribution system was pending. The GIS-aided maps would help the KWA get an accurate picture of the distribution lines that criss-cross the city.

G. Madhu, professor, Division of Safety and Fire Engineering at the Cochin University of Science and Technology, held the lack of co-ordination among various agencies responsible for such accidents. “The companies undertaking work on gas or petroleum pipelines have location sketches or maps. However, inter-agency co-ordination is poor. Such data and spatial information have to be shared for an efficient and timely response to a disaster,” he said.

Mr. Madhu recommended having a collated pan-city GIS-based map showing all utilities below the ground. The relevant data could be shared with the public and the rest used by agencies, he said.

Hazard analysis

Experts recommended conducting a hazard analysis of high-risk underground infrastructure to prevent accidents and to ensure scientific planning and execution of various projects. Hazard analysis involves mapping of areas which are prone to disaster so as to develop a visual representation of the hazard. The analysis aims at identifying areas in which the potential impact of a disaster is higher.

New proposal

The Fire and Rescue Services Department has now recommended that agencies involved in road digging and underground cabling in Ernakulam should exchange location sketches and information to avoid accidents. The proposal emerged in view of the increasing number of accidents while carrying out underground cabling or road digging work. The department will inform the district administration that such works should be carried out only in the presence of jurisdictional officers of the agencies involved in the work.

A senior official of the Department pointed out that the contractors undertaking such works lacked knowledge about the pipelines passing through the area concerned. The government agencies, which give consent for the digging, fail to provide adequate information or sketches that would explain infrastructure in each region.

Guidelines for contractors

The Department has suggested that guidelines have to be issued to contractors undertaking cable-laying work. The minimum width to be maintained, especially from gas pipes while conducting any digging work, should be ensured. The agencies concerned have to plan earlier the work to be carried out in each region.

Fire and Rescue Services personnel said government agencies often lacked the maps or sketches of the underground cables. Those institutions need to prepare a detailed sketch on such underground installations. It would help prevent accidents such as the one that happened at Chalikkavattom in February, they said.