Kolkata Overpass Collapse Leaves Dozens Dead or Injured

New York Times ^ | Mar 31, 2016 | Hari Kumar and Nida Najar

[Ray76]

Rescue teams in Kolkata, India, scrambled on Thursday to retrieve scores of people believed to be trapped under a partly constructed vehicle overpass that collapsed with a deafening blast around midday.

[Lurker]

Indian engineering, Indian inspectors, and Indian labor. What could possibly go wrong?

[Bullish]

uh huh... And the India people are said to be superior in intelligence. Of course they were probably using faulty construction and shoddy materials but hey, at least they were saving money for the India upper class to spend on themselves.

[Secret Agent Man]

Just go to yahoo and type in “indian electrical nightmare” and view the images.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

23 dead. 90 rescued.

[Blue Jays]

An average of thirteen (!) people die per DAY on their national rail system due to accidents.
Their major transit hubs even have a small morgue to hold bodies until they can be claimed by family.
We cannot grasp their approach to maintaining safety and preserving life.

[minnesota_bound]

Too late now but they should have blocked access while the construction was going on.

[MinuteGal]

India is noted for its massive, high-fatality disasters, whether it be landslides, human stampedes, disease epidemics, poison gas explosions, building collapses, crowded train derailments, crowded ferries sinking, bridges breaking up.....or whatever.

This has been going on for decades and decades and nothing ever changes.

It's like watching an Indian "Perils of Pauline" 1900's film serial that never ends.

If ever a country had a jinx on it, it's India.

Leni

[Mastador1]

Indian engineering, Indian inspectors, and Indian labor. What could possibly go wrong?

If only they had been building it for cows instead of people, this would never have been allowed to happen.

[Albion Wilde]

I was surprised to learn that Kolkata is the city formerly known as Calcutta.

[Axenolith]

Many of those guys cut their teeth on freeway projects here in the US before taking the experience back to India...

[Axenolith]

Their rail fatality rate is about twice the US rate. Not bad for being behind the technological curve of us and having close to a billion people.

[OrangeHoof]

The pictures I saw of the collapse were depressing - not because of the wreckage but because of the filthy ricketty buildings around the wreckage and the mass of humanity standing around like seemingly every picture I see of India. Overcrowding, filth and squalor. They may be nice people but, OMG, how do they live that way?

[wideminded]

I was trying to figure out what one is seeing in this image:

Is that an elevated street or highway to the left or is it some sort of roof? Why is it strangely curved even a few blocks away? What is all that stuff on it? For an elevated highway it seems crazily close to the buildings.

[Ray76]

I think it’s an elevated road.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1151118/jsp/calcutta/story_53668.jsp#.Vv4U8hkzfAt

The roads mentioned in the article are shown on this map

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=22.58612,88.35896&z=17&t=M&marker0=22.57265%2C88.36389%2CKolkata%20india

[Ray76]

Likewise.

[NYRepublican72]

To think this hellhole of a country holds a lot of IT infrastructure. What an absolute mess and an absolute disaster.

[chit*chat]

Prayers for those poor people. If it isn’t the weather it’s an earthquake or something like this. They can’t seem to get a break.

[mikey_hates_everything]

I think I've seen something like that somewhere...

[cgbg]

I didn’t know Calcutta is now Kolkata.

I wonder how much money the government wasted changing signs, stationery, whatever for the name change.

This is an interesting article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/22/suzannegoldenberg

Apparently almost no-one lived in the city before the British occupied the area—so the attempt to deny the city’s imperial roots is to deny its real history.

In short—political correctness run amok.