Rickety street hoardings, worn-out iron frames of advertisements hanging from buildings, leaning electric poles and cables entangling trees and electric poles — the risks of any of them toppling and injuring commuters are very high in Calcutta.

The Met office has issued alerts about an impending thunderstorm. A strong gust of wind can lead to the fall of a pole or a tree already bent under the weight of cables. The rusted and run-down street hoardings can collapse.

A forecast by the Met office on Friday said: “Thunderstorms with lightning along with gusty wind speed activity very likely to occur over north Bengal from May 4 and over south Bengal from May 5.”

The Telegraph drove through the city on Saturday and spotted many such threats.

A rusted iron frame of advertisement hung from a building at Esplanade. Rusted tin plates of street hoardings hang dangerously over the pavement at Camac Street and Park Street. The tin plates flutter with the wind. Three street hoardings in similar condition could be spotted on opposite pavements near Minto Park.

An official of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), custodian of city’s pavements, said there were about 410 street hoardings in Calcutta. This is besides hoardings hanging from buildings. “We do not go and check the condition of the hoardings but the agencies who win bids to use the street hoardings are supposed to check the condition of the hoardings. We will again ask them to check the condition of the hoardings,” said the official.

“We have repaired 20 street hoardings in the past year,” said the official.

A street pole leaning towards the pavement and drooping under the weight of thick bunches of cables stands along Ballygunge Circular Road.

Thick bunches of cables, disorganised and sometimes hanging within reach of someone standing on pavements were hanging on Ballygunge Circular Road, Camac Street and Shakespeare Sarani, among others.

After Cyclone Amphan in 2020, KMC engineers had said that hundreds of electric poles fell under the weight of thick bunches of cables tied to them.

“Our men work through the year to identify cables hanging dangerously and sort them. We have issued notices to cable operators and internet service providers many times,” said Sandip Bakshi, the mayoral council member in charge of KMC’s lighting department.

The KMC has issued multiple threats to snap cables in places where they were not organised and defunct cables were not removed, but very little has changed in reality.

A walk down many pavements in the city also takes eyes towards the trees that have very little soil around their base. The footpath, right up to the tree, has been paved with paver blocks or concrete.

Naturalists said such paving constricts the growth of surface roots that help the tree stand erect against strong winds.

Abin Chaudhuri, an architect who has designed many public spaces in the city, said Calcutta has too many hoardings, which makes supervising them even more difficult. “If you have lesser number of hoardings, it will be easy to monitor them. Also the authorities need to have some plan about what they intend to do with overhead cables.”

Saswat Bandyopadhyay, a professor of urban planning at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, said: “An annual audit of the overhanging structures can help reduce the risks. The goal should be to avoid and minimise damage than only responding to a damage”.