The collapse of the critical Balandra bridge on Saturday essentially cut off motor vehicle traffic to the most remote communities on the north-east coast of Trinidad and Tobago, leaving residents to make their way across a makeshift bridge made from planks and stranding visitors to the popular beaches there. A new bridge has been under construction to cross the Balandra River for some time, and a crane working on the project was crossing the original, ageing span when it gave way. Regional councillor Terry Rondon was on the spot on Saturday, working with Toco/Sangre Grande MP Indra Sinanan Ojah-Maharaj to bring some semblance of order to the chaos that ensued.

The police and representatives of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management were on the spot by late afternoon, though the promised Bailey bridge still had not appeared by late evening. It is to be hoped that the common-sense approach by all responsible for the rapid response to the situation extended to providing police patrols for the vehicles left stranded by the roadside by the collapse of the bridge and the subsequent ferrying home of their owners. While there is much to commend in the rapid, determined response by politicians, the police and the ODPM in this matter, and much to be grateful for in an incident which caused no injuries, there remain questions to be asked about the state of bridges in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly those which are apparently as out of mind as they are out of sight.

The deadly collapse of the Caroni Bailey bridge, which killed one man and injured several others should have sent a clear signal to the Ministry of Works and Transport that the ageing spans that the country has blithely relied on for decades were in need of review, evaluation and scheduled repair and replacement. A formal inquiry into the circumstances of the collapse of the Caroni Bailey bridge was duly formed, convened and completed in good order and good time and the report delivered to the Government in late 2008. It is still to be laid in Parliament or shared with the public.
The fate of this report and those of other commissions of enquiry, such as the detailed investigation into the Piarco Airport Development Project remains a source of irritation to citizens interested in the background of these failures in public resource management and the delivery of publicly accessible indicators of transparency.

Without public review and debate of the results of the only known independent report on a massive bridge failure in recent memory, it seems inevitable, in retrospect that the problem would repeat itself.
There are inevitable questions to be raised about the specific incident that took place on Saturday. Should a massive crane have been tasked to operate on a span known to be deteriorating and long overdue for replacement?
Who was responsible for the works in progress that day and gave the order for that fateful action and what engineering decisions governed the action?
Was the capacity of the bridge to handle sustained loads measured and posted clearly?

These are the kind of questions inevitably posed in retrospect, not in the heat of hard work taking place in the rain, but they are the kind of questions that a commission of enquiry poses with the intention of not just getting answers, but to craft best practices designed to minimise the likelihood of deadly mistakes being repeated. Trinidad and Tobago has been cheated of the hard work of the learned people who evaluated the collapse of the Caroni Bailey bridge at taxpayer expense, and it is entirely possible that their contemplations and suggestions might have led to changes in work practices that might have saved the Balandra bridge. It is also possible that they might not have considered this possibility, but the critical issue is that we do not know what they discovered and suggested as remedies and we have the right to know. In the face of Saturday’s disaster, it is entirely acceptable to argue that now the public needs to know.