Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Bai­ley bridges con­struct­ed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port should be re­viewed to en­sure com­pli­ance with man­u­fac­tur­ers' re­quire­ments. This rec­om­men­da­tion was made al­most one month af­ter a com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to in­ves­ti­gate the col­lapse of the 160-foot Bai­ley bridge on Old South­ern Main Road in Curepe. But the re­port was nev­er re­leased, de­spite per­sis­tent pleas from the pub­lic. To­day marks two years since the bridge col­lapsed, tak­ing the life of a work­er. Four days af­ter the dis­as­ter, on Au­gust 6, 2008, Man­ning ap­point­ed Kei­th Sir­ju, Da­wood Pan­dor and Rossi­ni Cas­tro to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The re­port was hand­ed in a month af­ter.

The find­ings of the re­port, how­ev­er, have nev­er been pub­li­cised.

The 25-page re­port, ob­tained by T&T Guardian, stat­ed the bridges branch of the min­istry was in dire need of re­view and over­haul and had to be brought up to in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices. "Cur­rent­ly, it (branch) ap­pears un­der­staffed with many po­si­tions va­cant," the re­port added. Page 23 of the re­port said there need­ed to be a clear de­f­i­n­i­tion of the func­tions and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the branch and pro­vi­sion of suit­ably qual­i­fied staff ca­pa­ble of ful­fill­ing those ob­jec­tives were es­sen­tial. "It ap­pears that tech­ni­cal mem­bers of staff who have gath­ered ex­per­tise in bridge en­gi­neer­ing whilst in the branch of­ten move on through pro­mo­tions," the re­port said. "They are re­placed by new staff who have had lit­tle for­mal train­ing and lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty for knowl­edge trans­fer. "Con­ti­nu­ity and ex­per­tise are, there­fore, left to staff mem­bers who may be well-in­ten­tioned, but in­suf­fi­cient­ly trained to un­der­take high-end re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

The com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed that a se­nior en­gi­neer be "ur­gent­ly en­gaged" to re­view the op­er­a­tions of the branch. The terms of ref­er­ence of the com­mit­tee were to ex­am­ine pro­ce­dures em­ployed in the dis­man­tling of the bridge, in­ves­ti­gate whether there was com­pli­ance with all codes of prac­tices, method­olo­gies and stan­dards in the dis­man­tling of a bridge of that na­ture and con­duct all the req­ui­site struc­tur­al tests and analy­ses to com­plete the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Find­ings re­vealed the pro­ce­dures used to dis­man­tle the bridge were "ill-con­ceived and in­ap­pro­pri­ate." The com­mit­tee said be­fore the as­sem­bly or dis­as­sem­bly of any bridge, for­mal and strin­gent pro­ce­dures should be read­i­ly avail­able and a site method state­ment be pre­pared. There were no safe­ty of­fi­cers on site.

The com­mit­tee con­clud­ed that while there was no ev­i­dence to sug­gest any de­lib­er­ate reck­less act dur­ing the dis­as­sem­bly, there was "in­ad­e­quate tech­ni­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion" of those in­volved. With the ex­cep­tion of Ram­dath Bis­soo, who died when the bridge col­lapsed, every­one en­gaged in the op­er­a­tions was em­ployed by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port.

The re­port in­di­cat­ed that the col­lapse oc­curred when:

�2 the crit­i­cal top chord re­in­force­ment had been re­moved;

�2 the bridge floor decks were un­fixed from their sup­port­ing tran­soms by ly­ing in their orig­i­nal po­si­tions;

�2 sev­en con­sec­u­tive ver­ti­cal brac­ing frames be­gin­ning at the north­ern end of the bridge had been re­moved from the east and west truss­es;

�2 22 feet (two pan­els) of out­er truss on the north-east­ern end were re­moved; and

�2 The Hiab loader crane was lo­cat­ed on the bridge ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 feet from the north­ern end and was en­gaged in the re­moval of 22 feet (two pan­els) of out­er truss on the north-west­ern end of the bridge.

Oth­er find­ings:

�2 No in­stances of struc­tur­al degra­da­tion;

�2 no safe­ty of­fi­cer to mon­i­tor op­er­a­tions;

�2 no method state­ment pre­pared for bridge's re­moval; and

�2 crew's plan for re­moval was to make bridge lighter to fa­cil­i­tate eas­i­er with­draw­al;

Flash­back

On Au­gust 2, 2008, Hiab loader crane op­er­a­tor Ram­dath Bis­soo died while the bridge was be­ing dis­man­tled. John Ge­of­frey suf­fered a bro­ken leg, rib and punc­tured lungs, while five oth­ers sus­tained mi­nor in­juries. Bis­soo, who would have been 45 this year, was a fa­ther of two girls and was em­ployed with S Jag­mo­han and Sons Ltd.

Os­ha re­port

Find­ings in the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health and Au­thor­i­ty (Os­ha) re­port are that the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port failed to com­ply with safe­ty prac­tices and gave in­struc­tions to dis­man­tle the bridge on a flawed, untest­ed method­ol­o­gy. The Os­ha re­port stat­ed: "The di­rect cause of the ac­ci­dent was the re­duced ca­pac­i­ty and ex­ces­sive stress in­duced on the bridge by the re­moval of key struc­tur­al el­e­ments at the north­ern sec­tion of the bridge. "The method of dis­man­tling used by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was de­vel­oped by min­istry bridges en­gi­neers and was nev­er used on dou­ble pan­el Bai­ley bridges pri­or to the ac­ci­dent," it added.