Bridge accident: Repairs start but there will be no closure to traffic

Several anchors, chains and bolts were severed after a coastal vessel collided with the Demerara Harbour Bridge on Tuesday morning.

General Manager of the Demerara Harbour Bridge, Wayne Watson, told the News Room that a team was immediately mobilised and has commenced repairs. The repairs are expected to take approximately six hours, based on the tide.

Fixtures will be done undercarriage-in the river- and will not require any unscheduled closure of the bridge.

“The fixture that we will do is basically undercarriage…the bolts that were severed, the chains and the ropes and the buoys all those things will be put in place. That will be done from the river.

“So the traffic – (including) loaded, unloaded trucks – will continue to flow.

“All we are asking commuters is to continue to be cautious when using the bridge, generally,” Watson said.

Information gathered by the News Room revealed that the incident occurred around 05:30hrs after the vessel, MV Princess Anisa, which isregistered to INS Shipping at Goed Intent, West Bank Demerara, collided with the northern side of the bridge.

Majority of the damage occurred at Spans 42 and 43 of the bridge.

The boat was carrying rice and Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar told the News Room that preliminary investigations revealed that the crew men slept away.

This caused the vessel to drift and collide with the bridge.

Highlighting the frequent occurrence of incidents of this nature at the bridge, Indar said a number of measures were implemented to prevent any reoccurrence.

“Obviously the Harbour Bridge management will kick in the protocol whenever these things happen, because they have more happening too often.

“We put a lot of systems in place with MARAD (Maritime Administration Department (MARAD), with the pilot system.

“We are going to put some cluster piles in the river just to make sure vessels that’s drifting uncontrollably, because of the speed of the water have some piles that they can throw rope on to hold back it so they don’t hit the bridge,” Indar told the News Room.

The vessel has since been docked at the Coast Guard.

Indar said the owner of the vessel will have to pay for the damage.

“’So that we can recover the cost of damages from the owners of the vessel,” he noted.

While the bridge remained open following the incident, there were some disruption in the free flow of traffic.

“We have a constant traffic flow but because of the volume that came at the time when the vessel hit the bridge, we had a little concern because we didn’t know the extent of the damages; so we were controlling the speed and due to that we had some build up.

“Also we had several vehicles that were broken down on the bridge…so that contributed to the traffic build up,” Watson explained.