Ak­ile Si­mon

Three men lost their lives when a truck ex­plod­ed, short­ly af­ter 1 am, af­ter crash­ing in­to the Bai­ley bridge along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, Ma­coya, ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing. The vic­tims have been iden­ti­fied as Pe­nal res­i­dents Ro­han "Bob­by" Ma­haraj, 35, Kishore Ku­mar, 30, and Anil Mo­hammed, 30. Po­lice said with­in the past two weeks, six peo­ple have lost their lives along the high­way be­tween the Bai­ley bridge and the Pi­ar­co in­ter­sec­tion. There have now been four deaths oc­cur­ring in ac­ci­dents on the bridge this year.

Of­fi­cers re­main un­cer­tain as to which one of the vic­tims was dri­ving the ve­hi­cle at the time of the in­ci­dent. Po­lice said the truck was pro­ceed­ing at top speed, east along the high­way, when it slammed in­to the bridge. Two of the bod­ies were found out­side the ve­hi­cle while the third was on the dash­board of the truck, po­lice said. Sgt Gar­cia, of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion, is in­ves­ti­gat­ing. Af­ter the ac­ci­dent, the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, be­tween Ma­coya and the Or­ange Grove in­ter­sec­tion, was closed to ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic be­cause of se­vere dam­age to the bridge.

The ac­ci­dent was rem­i­nis­cent of the col­lapse last year of the reg­u­lar bridge on the same spot, be­cause of heavy rains, which caused bumper-to-bumper traf­fic along the East­ern Main Road, Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, as mo­torists sought al­ter­na­tive routes. Mo­torists al­so were tem­porar­i­ly al­lowed to use the PBR be­tween Ma­coya and Or­ange Grove, dur­ing rush hour. Yes­ter­day, be­tween the Ma­coya and Or­ange Grove in­ter­sec­tion, po­lice con­vert­ed the west-bound lane in­to two-way traf­fic.

The dam­aged bridge was ex­pect­ed to be re­paired late last night and re­opened to­day. Work al­so was be­ing con­duct­ing on the new bridge, which is es­ti­mat­ed to cost $25 mil­lion, sources said. The Bai­ley bridge was in­stalled days af­ter the old­er bridge col­lapsed on No­vem­ber 17 last year af­ter tor­ren­tial rain and flood­ing. The new bridge, to re­place the dam­aged Bai­ley bridge, is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the first week in De­cem­ber, in time for the Christ­mas sea­son, of­fi­cials said.