Chennai's Anna Salai caves in, trapping bus and car in giant crater

In a shocking incident, a state-run bus and a car met with an accident after Chennai’s prominent Anna Salai caved in on Sunday.

Visuals from Anna Salai show a Honda City car and the MTC bus trapped in a huge crater that had suddenly formed on the road near the Church Park school.

Initial reports suggest that around 35 people were inside the bus, and sustained minor injuries. Some of them were taken to the Royapettah Government Hospital.

Since it was a Sunday, there was very less traffic on the road. A witness told the medis that the bus was stationary when the road caved in. "The bus had stopped and some people were getting out. The road caved in slowly and that's perhaps why people could escape," the man said.

As is evident from the picture, the crater was so deep that the car can barely be seen from the distance. 

The cave-in took place owing to tunneling work that is being carried out for the Chennai Metro Rail.   

Speaking to The News Minute, Sruthi Ravindran, a PRO at Chennai Metro Rail said, "The cave-in must have taken place owing to the loose soil. Geographically, ours is loose soil. We have tried our level best to tunnel below 20 feet so it doesn't disturb the upper layer of soil. However, metro pipelines and other road construction work makes the soil loose." 

On being asked why cave-ins were becoming a



regular occurence, the Chennai Metro Rail official stated, "These incidents are unfortunate. We have done such tunneling work in Chintadripet and no cave-in has occured. We were tunneling very slowly there."

She also added that the tunneling work for the Thousand Lights and AG-DMS strech has stopped following the incident. "An inspection is going on. They will survey the area and make a report and then precautionary measures will be taken," said Sruthi.   

 Chennai police officials have cordoned off Anna Salai – which is an arterial road in the city. A crane has been deployed to remove the vehicles.

This is the second such incident on Anna Salai in ten days.

On March 30, the same stretch had caved in, with foam leaking onto the road. That incident threw traffic out of gear. The Chennai Traffic Police had then said that the road had caved in owing to the metro construction taking place on Anna Salai.

In December 2015, a giant crater was formed along the Anna Salai-Vijayaraghava Road in Teynampet. On that occasion to, the road cave-in was blamed on the metro construction.

A 10-foot stretch on Poonamallee High Road, another arterial road in Chennai caved in in June 2015 owing to tunnelling work for the Chennai Metro Rail. The cave-in even witnessed a car getting stuck in the crater. However, the occupants in the vehicle escaped unhurt.