LASBELA: The shallow flow of the Hub River under the bridge that connects Sindh with Balochistan beckoned children and young men for a swim on a particularly sizzling Tuesday afternoon.

Challenging each other, the shirtless boys swam up to the broken walls around the pillars to then climb over it. With shalwar legs ballooning in the breeze they dove again and again. Their excitement, their happiness was apparent from their echoing giggles and screams.

Dawn was under the Hub River bridge after footage of two of its pillar pairs developing cracks appeared on social media. Soon after it went viral, there were tweets and requests from all quarters for the National Highway Authority (NHA) and the government to do something about it because negligence in repairing the damage could prove to be disastrous.

It was explained then that there is “no threat to the bridge as it is strong and fully intact with supporting pillars that are solid and resilient”. This was stated after Shahid Ehsanullah, a member of the National Highway Authority (NHA), southern Balochistan, was said to have examined the bridge with other experts and engineers. It was also said that the experts visit the Hub River bridge regularly at least twice a year and there was no chance of its collapsing since it was recently repaired a couple of years back and also before that in 2014.

NHA recently has claimed that the bridge is strong and fully intact

There was also a tweet from a politician saying that the footage of the pillars that went viral was taken from an angle that only makes it look dangerous, and that things are not as bad as they look.

Built in 1962, the bridge sees much heavy traffic pass over it 24 hours a day. There are buses, trucks, containers, cars and motorcycles. In case of its collapse, the tragedy that unfolds will be unimaginable.

Gul Hassan, a young man, who lives in the vicinity of the bridge and often comes for a dip in the Hub River at this point, told Dawn that the huge cracks in the supporting walls around the bridge’s pillars, which are also resulting in its crumbling, appeared only recently during the heavy rains.

“There is the Hub Dam up ahead. When the dam filled up during the rains, they didn’t open the spillway gates there as they should have. The water that overflowed from there then flowed through here. The current was so strong that it made the pillar bases hollow and brittle,” he shared.

“I am no engineer or expert. I am not even that well-educated. But this much I know that the supports around the pillars were needed therefore they are there. If they are broken, sooner or later it will also affect the pillars too,” he pointed out.

“I live right here, I have been swimming in this water since I was a little boy. The police and Customs officers stationed on the bridge know me and my cousins well. If anyone is drowning in the river, they call us for help. We have pulled out several picnickers from here, alive as well as dead unfortunately,” he shared a bit about himself.

Then turning his gaze up towards the bridge where you could see the traffic flow, he added: “Today, the flow of traffic is easy. But there are also days when we see traffic jams with lots of heavy vehicles stranded on the bridge. God forbid, if something were to happen. ...” his voice trailed off.

Returning to Karachi, one had to get on the same bridge. Instinct told us to request the driver to jam his foot on the accelerator.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2020