They began appearing in random places, the sinkholes. In the first instance, it happened close to Artisan's College main gate. A hawker who had been selling boiled eggs and savouries was swallowed into the depths along with his cart, his screams would haunt those happened to be there. The municipal corporation filled up the sinkhole (burying the hawker and his cart forever) with rocks, soil and debris and the matter was soon forgotten. The second incident happened a few years later, on the road leading to the railway station at a point where a side road connected to it. People blamed it on a private contractor who had been drilling underground channels to feed fibre-optic cables through. What the people did not know was that the problem went deeper than the private contractor's excavator's drill bit could reach. The third incident took place when a huge chunk of Tarmac disappeared into the depths the bottom of which could not be seen. It was fortunate that no lives were lost. What rang alarm bells though, in this incident was that it had happened very close to the now drained out wetland. The wetland, known as the Berton Wetland had once spread over ten acres of land. It had been host to a large number of birds, migratory as well as native. Now it had become a prime real estate location. Geological experts had warned against the destruction of wetlands, because of the fact that they were important aquifers that according to them, helped recharge groundwater reserves.
But then it was a tragedy that the administration had ignored the early signs that something was wrong. The number of cave-ins had increased and soon there were huge holes in the ground. Scientists and experts had concurred that depletion of groundwater reserves due to rampant extraction coupled with the steady elimination of wetlands and water bodies had caused the hollowing out of the subterranean structure. The cave-ins and incidents of subsidence were the results of the subterranean structure's inability to support the weight of the surface layer. The added stress of construction activities, vibration caused by industries and vehicles had made things worse. When it rained, large amounts of water runoff was forced to flow over the already weakened surface forcing it to collapse into the already hollow spaces that had been vacated by the receding subterranean water levels.
I had prepared my report about the whole situation and my work was almost done in the town of Gojjam. Ravi and I had been sent by the International Institute of Geological Studies in Geneva. I was going through the whole report in my mind waiting for the traffic to ease when the ground beneath us began to vibrate. It was as if a freight train was passing by. And then there was a loud crash! A huge portion of the ground in front of us had caved in, taking with it a few vehicles, two cars and a bus. Ravi moved towards the door handle of SUV and had just opened the left side when I shouted, "Where do you think you are going?" He answered, "People hanging to the edges!" And I saw with horror that it was true. Even as I stepped out of the SUV, I saw with fear that the hole was steadily increasing in size and it was moving towards the SUV. I ran towards Ravi and grabbed his hand shouting into his ear over the noise, "We need to get out of here right now! The sinkhole will be upon us."
Thankfully Ravi responded to the urgency in my tone and we had barely covered a brief distance when the sinkhole was upon us taking with it the SUV and the car behind it.
"My goodness!" Ravi screamed, even as we clawed our way from the sinking earth, snatching at our heels. When we were on safe ground, or so it seemed, we turned back to look at the devastation and were terrified to see that the sinkhole spanned a good two hundred feet. Blinking his eyes with disbelief, Ravi turned to me and said, "This is worse than I thought, we need to get out of this place!"
"Yes," I agreed, "But then we'll have to leg it out as our transport is gone" With this, we began to trudge our way away from the destruction. Fortunately, our cell phones were in our pockets and I called Dr Julian at the International Institute of Geological Studies. He picked up immediately on the first ring and asked me, "Hi, Ronin, how are things over there?" And I replied, Sir, it is really bad over here worse than we thought! The whole town is subsiding. It looks like the subterranean structure is steadily collapsing. We have just escaped a large cave-in, a huge sinkhole has appeared taking away our SUV and a large number of vehicles on the road. Even as I speak, the sinkhole is growing in size, taking away structures, vehicles."
"Get out of there!" Dr Julian replied in a terse voice. "Your work is done, and nothing much can be done to save the town." "Yes, Sir," I replied and then turned to Ravi to give him an upshot of what had conspired between our department head and me.
We walked away from the scene even as the emergency vehicles screamed towards the scene of the destruction. It was clear the Mother Nature had wreaked her revenge on the town of Gojjam for having caused great damage to the environment because of the greed of the people who would willingly destroy the wetlands and freshwater bodies for money. I recalled seeing the unscrupulous tanker owners extracting water from underwater wells to sell to builders for construction purposes. The Green Tribunal had passed strictures against such activities but without any serious conviction. The law enforcement agencies had been lax in enforcing the rulings of the Green Tribunal, thanks to greased palms and a general lack of knowledge of the implications of excessive depletion of groundwater levels. The common man had been equally at fault for the lack of responsibility towards the steady deterioration of the environment.
The moral of this story is that we are all responsible for the degradation of the environment. When we drain out freshwater bodies and fill up natural rainwater runoff channels and resort to indiscriminate construction of buildings without assessing their environmental impact, we are only inviting the wrath of nature.
No comments:
Post a Comment