Emergency works caused Thursday’s harbour bridge re-opening delay

Jan 14, 2017 News

The management of the Demerara Harbour Bridge Corporation (DHBC) has apologised to

Maintenance Engineer, Demerara Harbour Bridge Corporation, Christopher Grannum

commuters for the extended opening of the bridge Thursday which led of long lines on the East and West Bank of Demerara.
“People travelling to West Demerara were affected. Long lines of traffic also affected people travelling along East Bank Demerara,” the bridge disclosed in a statement.
Maintenance Engineer, DHBC, Christopher Grannum, explained that routine maintenance was being carried out when they realized that extended work was needed. This resulted in the maintenance taking longer than scheduled.
“Due to the critical nature of the work we carried out yesterday, we encountered some difficulties and we would like to apologise for the problems on the East Bank Road but it was regular maintenance work that escalated to critical works,” Grannum explained.
The Maintenance Engineer noted that when an inspection was carried out on Wednesday, it was realised that work had to be carried out to prevent a section of the bridge from collapsing.
An additional welding team was called in to complete the works. He added that if this was not done, it would have resulted in the bridge being out of operation for days.
“We found that the post at Span 37 and 38 of the bridge was damaged. It had various problems. The eyes of the post were enlarged and it had a crack so we had to change it due to the severity of the situation. While changing the post yesterday we encountered some difficulties in extracting and installing the (new) post so that’s why we went over the time limit,” Grannum underlined.
Meanwhile, the night retraction which restarted last November is expected to reduce the amount of traffic on the bridge during peak periods. This would result in less maintenance.

The post at Span 37/38 of the Demerara Harbour Bridge which needed emergency repairs on Thursday.

Grannum said it is too soon to determine whether the night retractions would have actually resulted in a decrease in traffic at peak period. He said efforts are intensifying to ensure that the traffic is reduced to decrease the number of retractions and maintenance.

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