POST TUNNEL COLLAPSE, NEW BUILDING CODE WILL INCORPORATE ESCAPE ROUTE PROVISION

The painful ordeal of 41 Silkyara tunnel workers during their rescue operation has exposed the gaps in standards for excavation and tunnelling and the need for better regulations for land use planning/zoning in the Himalayan states, especially in those areas that are more prone to landslides.

- RAHUL CHHABRA

The Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS), which is responsible for framing and updating the building code, has been jolted by the Silkyara crisis partly aggravated due to the absence of an escape tunnel for workers. The BIS is now looking to speed up the framing of the new building code that would include escape routes as a compulsory component of construction standards for tunnels and underground activities.

Also, the Ministry of Road and Transport has ordered a safety audit of all 29 underconstruction tunnels in the country. The total length of these tunnels is around 79 km and 12 of these are situated in Himachal Pradesh, 6 in J&K, 2 each in Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan, and one each in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Delhi.