Gangtok/Darjeeling, June 20: The authorities of Darjeeling District Hospital have drawn up a contingency plan to evacuate patients after cracks appeared on the rear of the building following incessant rains over the past three days.
Small cracks were first noticed last evening, but they became more pronounced — at least one of them is one-and-half inches wide — today as rain continued to lash the town till about 1pm.
The guard wall behind the building has developed even larger cracks, forcing the district administration to shift seven families from the settlement on the other side of the wall.
S. Bhaumik, the district’s chief medical officer of health, said about 50 to 60 patients housed in wards in the rear of the building would have to shifted, depending on the advice of the building’s engineers.
“PWD engineers will be inspecting the building tomorrow. Let us see what they will have to say,” said Bhaumik.
Already the district administration has sounded the management of the Marwari Sahayak Samiti Bhawan for rooms to house patients. “They have agreed to allow the use of their rooms if the need arises,” said Rajesh Pandey, the district magistrate of Darjeeling.
Sources said some patients actually moved out of the hospital without bothering for discharge certificates as soon as word spread that the building had developed cracks.
“Few patients in the rear rooms moved to the front of the building on their own,” the source added.
The building was almost totally reconstructed with funds from the World Bank in 2003. The new building has 308 beds and was constructed at a cost of about Rs 5 crore.
In Sikkim, which has been virtually cut off from the rest of the country with the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s indefinite shutdown affecting NH31A, landslips have blocked intra-state roads.
The first onslaught of the monsoons cut off parts of West and South Sikkim earlier this week.
The Gyalshing-Dentam road in West Sikkim has been blocked with debris covering the route at several places. The Rabongla-Gyalshing state highway is blocked at Hingdam. Here, the roads that were damaged last monsoon have given way again.
An 11-year-old girl died in Central referral Hospital on Wednesday after she suffered injuries in a landslide near Singtam in East district. Ganga Maya Gadal was one her way to visit her mother her workplace at Chalamthang when she was caught in a pile of falling debris and washed down 40 feet below.
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