The Demerara Harbour Bridge (DHB) has conditionally reopened to vehicles weighing 18 tonnes and below as repair works are 75% completed.
In a statement yesterday, the Ministry of Public Works said that a special arrangement was put in place that would see vehicles within the weight limit traversing the bridge between the hours of 12:00 – 04:00 am.
Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill said that the decision was arrived at following another inspection of the bridge by the structural engineers and advice given by the bridge’s Management Team.
“Firstly, Structural Engi-neers are recommending that the weight of 18 tonnes and under be allowed to cross the bridge, but only between the hours of 00:00hrs (12:00 PM) to 04:00hrs (AM), when there is far less traffic on the bridge. There is also a stipulation with the speed limit, drivers must adhere to the speed limit of 32 KMH while traversing in ONE direction at a time,” Edghill was quoted as saying.
Additionally, Edghill said that the shift supervisors along with special constabulary ranks will be closely monitoring the transit of vehicles on the bridge to ensure adherence to the temporary special arrangements.
“I want to reiterate my gratitude to commuters and drivers for their patience during this unexpected ordeal and urge them to use the bridge with care, I implore you to follow the rules, your safety is very important, and we want you to reach your destination safely,” he added.
During a brief telephone interview with Stabroek News, General Manager of the DHB Wayne Watson said that the vehicles would be able to intermittently traverse the bridge.
“What we are doing from 12-4 am, until we complete the works to the bridge, is that we are going to allow 18 tonnes and below to traverse going (in) one direction at a time with speed restrictions. So from the west to east, we are going to allow trucks to traverse and we are going to separate them probably by 15 minutes apart because you don’t want them to bunch up on the bridge.
“In between those trucks, smaller vehicles and so would traverse and when we clear the west side then we allow east to west trucks to go over. So intermittently, we are going to switch the directions,” he explained.
Speaking about the ongoing repairs, Watson said that there are two major issues that remain to be addressed. He explained that two pontoons have to be replaced and a winch on the retractor spans needs to be repaired. He noted that currently there are two temporary pontoons supporting the structure at the front of span 9 and back of span 8 but those need to be replaced immediately.
“Tomorrow [Wednes-day] myself and the engineering team from the harbour bridge is going to be meeting with the contractor to establish an arrangement to replace the first one. That is the one at the front end of span 9 and we haven’t started that as yet. The other thing is for us to do retraction we have one of our winches that got damaged in the impact. The bridge could have gone in and closed but it cannot retract so we got to get that winch fixed because those are the winches that normally open and close the bridge. Tomorrow that may be delivered to the agency for them to do the repair work.
“If you are looking at the overall percentage of repairs from the damage I would say that we are about 75% completed. The two pontoons and the winch would take us where we need to be at 100% because we already completed the anchorage and the other structural components that were destroyed by the impact,” Watson added.
He further stated that until the pontoons are replaced and the winch repaired, there would be no retraction of the bridge to facilitate marine traffic.
“…we cannot do retraction and at the said time and it is not advisable to allow loaded trucks or unloaded trucks to be traversing all the time because remember that pontoon has a hole and it is taking in water and we continuously pumping but that water that goes into that pontoon would put a strain on the structure and then you put other weight on it and that would not be advisable,” he said.
The Demerara Harbour Bridge was only reopened to vehicular traffic on Monday night following the accident early Saturday morning. At about 2 am on Saturday, the Tradewind Passion, a Panamanian registered vessel, was navigating the channel to offload fuel at GuyOil’s Provi-dence Terminal when it crashed into the bridge damaging four spans.
The vessel was the fifth one to transit the channel with the previous four experiencing no issues. The crash crumpled sections of the bridge and is believed to be the most serious collision in years on the 44-year-old structure.
At the time of the incident, the vessel was being piloted through the channel by one of Guyana’s five river pilots. Noting the unusual circumstances that led to the accident, the pilot was taken into custody by the Maritime Administration Depart-ment (MARAD) and handed over to the police for drug and alcohol testing. However, the results of those tests returned negative and according to MARAD, the vessel was fully manned at the time of the crash.
Work on the bridge was done utilizing engineers from the DHB technical team and as well as the private sector.
A Board of Inquiry has been set up to investigate the incident. The Board’s work is expected to wrap up in seven days. The members are Captain Joseph Lewis who is a marine officer and surveyor of ships, MARAD Legal Director Thandi McAllister, Youland Hughes, Inspector Ross from Marine Wing of GPF, Lieutenant Colonel David Shamshudeen from Coast Guard, Chief Transport and Planning Officer Patrick Thompson and a Board Member of the Guyana National Shipping Corporation, Dimitri Ali.
Meanwhile the Ship Supervisor, Andy Duke, who was injured as a result of the collision, remains hospitalised.
