30 highrise buildings to be pulled down

AHMEDABAD, FEB. 1. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) have identified 29 highrise buildings which need to be pulled down for being beyond repair and prepared a list of 131 `unsafe' buildings.

More than 200 multi-storeyed buildings were damaged, about 171 of them severely, and a number of apartments reduced to rubble in the quake that killed more than 750 people in the city.

The Army Engineers had been pulling down some buildings, endangering public safety, with controlled explosions.

According to the Deputy Municipal Commissioner the corporation had identified as of now 29 buildings, 21 of them in the western part of the city, which needed to be razed.

But he added that the number might increase as structural engineers from the AUDA, the L. D. Engineering College and other institutes were surveying the entire city for unsafe buildings.

A team of structural engineers from the Netherlands is expected to arrive in the city shortly to assist in the exercise.

Earlier, the Gujarat Minister of State for Home, Mr. Haren Pandya, had said that nearly 70 buildings needed to be demolished completely as the damage was beyond Repair.

The State Government had offered housing facilities free to those whose homes have collapsed.

There are more than 3000 vacant flats in a state of disrepair which are to be done up and allotted. The Government has decided to give housing facilities free of rent for a period of one year.

- UNI

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