The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port was forced to open the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) to pri­vate cars last evening af­ter a light­ning strike left the traf­fic lights at the Curepe In­ter­sec­tion non-func­tion­al.

Yes­ter­day there was heavy rain­fall and even flash flood­ing in some parts of the East-West cor­ri­dor, in­clud­ing St Joseph, St Au­gus­tine, the Uri­ah But­ler High­way in Mt Hope, Tu­na­puna, El Soc­cor­ro and the South­ern Main Road in Curepe.

Dur­ing the rains, light­ning struck tak­ing the pow­er out of the traf­fic lights.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the min­istry said PBR was open to light mo­tor ve­hi­cles.

It said this was nec­es­sary to fa­cil­i­tate the free flow of traf­fic fol­low­ing the ser­vice dis­rup­tion of the tem­po­rary traf­fic light sig­nals lo­cat­ed at the Curepe In­ter­change that were struck by light­ning.

The min­istry said it was mak­ing all ef­forts to re­store ser­vice in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

But the ad­verse weath­er was not the on­ly cause of traf­fic on Thurs­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing an equip­ment truck on the south­bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way forced mem­bers of the pub­lic to seek al­ter­na­tive routes be­cause of ma­jor traf­fic con­ges­tion.