School building on Santhome High Road develops cracks due to tunnelling for Metro Rail Phase II Project
The Hindu
Dominic Savio Matriculation School building develops cracks due to Chennai Metro construction; repairs underway, students given holiday.
The building of Dominic Savio Matriculation Higher Secondary School on Santhome High Road has developed cracks due to Chennai Metro Rail’s underground construction work that was carried out for the Phase II Project. Most of the repair works have been completed, but a few interventions still remain.
For building a tunnel between the Light House Metro station and Kutchery Road, a stretch that is part of corridor 4 (Light House to Poonamallee via Thirumayilai), a tunnel boring machine (TBM) was deployed on the stretch in September.
According to officials of Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL), the machine had drilled 852 m and had bored under the school sometime back; it is now nearing Kutchery Road. “The cracks had appeared because of soil settlement; we have observed some sandy soil in this area. Usually, such settlement doesn’t occur after the machine has crossed. This is a rare case,” an official said.
Sources said nearly five or six cracks had appeared on the school building. The repairs were taken up sometime back, and the entire process will be complete before October 14. Some parents raised concern about the cracks. Hence, the students have been given a couple of days holiday by which time the repairs will be completed.
“Cracks had emerged in September. Subsequently, the restoration work has been in progress. We did a detailed investigation and found it to be structurally safe. The school has two buildings constructed at different points in time, which are linked by a staircase. We wanted to do an investigation just to be safe. It has been completed, and we gave some suggestions to school authorities,” he added.
School authorities said the CMRL team visited their premises a few times to check on the work and told them that it would be completed soon. At present, the TBM has passed through the area and cross passage work (building a link passage between two tunnels) is under way.