Always at high risk
As the apartment culture thrives in the city growing not just horizontally, but vertically too, builders catering to the new demand often ignore the safety of the people who occupy the high- rises. The result has been deadly for some, with unsafe balconies and terraces claiming several lives over the last couple of years.
What is even more alarming ,however, is the frequency of such accidents. While Monday saw two-year-old G. Poorvaj, fall to his death from the balcony of his apartment building in Vijaya Bank Layout, Mico Layout police limits, Tuesday saw 18 people injured as a lift came crashing down in a building in a techpark.
In April last year, little Nayana, barely a year old , fell 25 feet to her death from a residential building in Srinivasanagar . A few months later, in September, 18-month-old Vandana fell 50 feet from her apartment in Vijaynagar police limits. Besides the toddlers, 10 and 13 year-olds too have fallen from unsafe buildings that had not provided for the safety of children.
While many of the builders continue to wear blinkers where safety is concerned, the civic body is guilty of not emphasising it enough in its building bylaws too. In fact, it brushes off the many deaths, putting the onus on the parents instead to take better care of their children. But when concerned occupants of apartments do try to introduce changes, they find they have to deal with builders who see installation of grills and meshes as an eyesore. Dhanya of Gokul apartment on Kanakapura road had to fight the builder to place a mesh between the grills of her balcony to keep her two- year- old safe. “The builder did not want me to place the mesh saying it spoilt the aesthetics and uniformity of the building's facade. But I put my foot down and went ahead," she recounts.
But not everyone is as lucky as builders continue to have the final say in many apartments, giving safety a miss.The BBMP bylaws too are silent on the height of balcony parapet walls and the permitted gap between railings and only specify the width of the balcony from the second floor. Ask BBMP’s additional director of town planning, Rangesh and he says the National Building Code (NBC) for apartments in India does not talk about the width between the grills. “All it says is every slab or balcony overlooking any exterior or interior open space which is 2 metres or more below should be provided with parapet walls or guard rails that are not less than 1.2 metres high,” he says. Despite this, the BBMP is believed to be now considering revising its building bylaws to incorporate some long pending safety measures.
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