Airport Underpass Collapse; Experts Suspect Faulty Wall Design
8 February 2018 12:10 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A number of experts suspected that the tunnel wall at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport's South Perimeter Road collapsed to due to faulty design and poor construction. The experts said the disaster was not solely caused by heavy rain.
Josia Irwan Rastandi, a civil engineering doctor from the University of Indonesia, said that the tunnel's construction poles adjacent to the landslide wall are flat and smooth. "Most likely the anchorage broke off or was dislodged," he said yesterday.
That, he said, can be caused by several factors, including bad design or poor construction materials. "So, it's not a weather problem," he said.
Read also: PVBMG: Collapsed Retaining Wall is not a Geological Disaster
Meanwhile, Adrin Tohari from the Geo-technology Research Center of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) highlighted the tunnel wall's lack of drainage system, allowing rainwater to be trapped in the soil and giving puts pressure that the wall cannot retain.
"That kind of wall construction is unusual," the landslide expert said.
The Structural Engineering Expertise Group of ITB's Faculty of Civil Engineering chairperson, Herlien Dwiarti Setio, hopes that there will be forensic and investigative audits over the wall's collapse. She said that structural failures can occur due to neglects during the planning and construction process.
"The load or water pressure factor must be taken into account in planning because we cannot expect the land to stay dry forever," the professor said.
On Monday evening, February 5, the wall retaining the Soekarno-Hatta Airport's underpass collapsed, burying two victims under the rubbles for hours, one of whom had died not long after she was rescued.
TEMPO