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Journalism of Courage
In a five-page report recently submitted to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), BBMP Chief Engineer B S Prahalad blamed deviation from the standard operating procedure (SOP) during a bitumen extraction test for the fire accident at the civic agency’s Quality Assurance Laboratory last month.
Prahalad, who was asked to conduct an ‘Internal Technical Enquiry’ on the fire accident, stated in his report that an electric stove was used to soften the bituminous mix, and an open fire was used to dry and separate the aggregate mix and residual benzene. This process actually was in deviation from the SOP that recommends the use of the oven.
The report, which will be submitted to the government, states that “usage of open fire may be the primary cause for the accident”. The report also states that the test was intended to determine binder content in the bituminous mix meant for road work in the Basavanagudi assembly constituency. The test was carried out by BBMP Assistant Executive Engineer Anand G with the help of Group-D employee Suresh Kumar. The report further states that both the BBMP employees were fully qualified to conduct the test.
Academic experts who were roped in for the investigation observed that the laboratory was operating in an extremely small space that was inadequate for conducting such tests.
The BBMP lab fire breakout on August 11 injured eight civic officials and killed chief engineer C M Shivakumar. Meanwhile, the Bengaluru police booked two engineers – Anand and Swamy – and Kumar on charges of negligence in connection with the fire accident.
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