‘Unplanned growth makes Darj unsafe’

Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey | TNN | Dec 26, 2017, Kolkata: The Queen of the Hills is staring at a major disaster due to the haphazard development and blatant flouting of building rules, revealed a study by Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology (IIEST).

The study was conducted over 7 sqkm that make up the heart of Darjeeling. The study was initiated over the fact that Darjeeling is in Zone IV or 'high-damage risk' area of earthquakes. Taking this as a constant, the architects studied the way Darjeeling has been randomly developed, violating accepted building laws for hill towns.

The study said unless immediate steps are taken to stall unbridled growth, a major disaster will occur. Faculty members of the architecture and geology departments of IIEST and Jadavpur University conducted a two-year study exclusively on Darjeeling town and came up with the alarming findings.

They mapped the comparative risk levels of the densely populated areas of Darjeeling and marked them as high, moderate and low risk zones accordingly. The study indicates that "high" risk spots will turn to rubble even if a medium intensity earthquake strikes.

Calling the population density of the endangered spots (see box) "slum-like", the study says that the density in some places crosses the danger mark of 50,000 people per square kilometre.

Architecture faculty at IIEST Souvanic Roy, who led the study, said, "Building norms have been randomly flouted here. The rule book says no building should be over 4.5 metres (one-and-a-half storey) high on three-metre-wide roads. The widest roads in Darjeeling town are three metres while buildings as high as eight storeys have come up along them!"

The experts said in hill stations, buildings on slopes with gradients over 30 degrees are not allowed. However, multistoried buildings have come up on slopes with gradients between 45 degrees and 60 degrees in Darjeeling. "Builders have used cantilevers, stilts and concrete pillars to construct these structures, but none of this can make these buildings safe," Roy said.

The other experts in the team were IIEST architecture faculty Soumen Mitra, Bhabani Prasad Mukhopadhyay of the geology department and Sushanta Chakraborty from the geology department of Jadavpur University.