Field Visit Report
Collapse of Truss Roof at Manipal Medical College, Pokhara
Incidence
The entire steel truss roof of the main building of Manipal Medical College in Pokhara over the waiting lounge suddenly collapsed on October 20, 2005 Thursday at around 2.15 PM killing ten persons and injuring 9 persons, some of them seriously. The fatalities could have been disastrous had there been a larger crowd as usual. Because of timing and rainy weather condition fewer people were present at the site during the time of the accident.
The catastrophic structural failure of the roof of one of the premier medical colleges has drawn widespread concern and attention. We engineers should have been naturally at the forefront basically on why such an unexpected failure after five years of construction occurred technically. Nepal Engineers’ Association (NEA) and Nepal Structural Engineers’ Association, Nepal (SEANep) urgently felt their social as well as professional responsibilities to address causes of the failure promptly.
Field Visit
With view to identifying causes of the roof failure from engineering points, following three engineers went to the accident site in Pokhara on October 22, 2005, Saturday.
- Er. Suresh Pokharel, Executive Member, NEA
- Er. Suhrid Kumar Sharma, Vice-president, SEANep
- Er. Bharat Mandal, General Secretary, SEANep
An arrangement was made to visit the site on the same day at 4 PM with permission from the hospital authority through Zonal Administrator and Chief District Officer (CDO). Though we tried for access to the accident site since our arrival to Pokhara at around 10 AM on Saturday we were given permission by the hospital management to visit the site at 4 PM only. This resulted into loss of valuable time and by that time most of the fallen debris and truss members were already removed. In spite of late entry into the accident site, we went to the top of the building where the roof was supported but could not take notes of the fallen truss members
The team is also accompanied by engineers Mr. Lekh Bahadur Gurung, Mr. Ramesh Bastola, Mr. Gokarna Bahadur Motra at Pokhara. Two of them are also included in fact finding committee formed the local government. Er. Sanjay Gupta from the hospital side was also present on the occasion.
Most of the debris and the fallen truss members had already been removed from the accident site during the time of visit. First we went to the top of the building, where the roof truss was supported. We studied the existing supports, their conditions and took their photographs. We were unable to examine the fallen truss members. The hospital management could not provide us the design report and drawings but told that they will provide whenever they are available to them.
We had a short discussion among the engineers at the Pokhara Engineering College on October 24, 2005 on Sunday before leaving for Kathmandu at 9AM.
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