The foreign firm that owns the barge which crashed into the Demerara Harbour Bridge will have to stand the expense for the repairs to the structure, General Manager Rawlston Adams stated.
“What I know for sure is that the owners for the vessel, that cost [for repairs] would be transferred to them,” Adams told reporters during a press conference Tuesday morning.
Parts of the Harbour Bridge was destroyed after a barge – which was not following established procedures – crashed into it during the wee hours of Monday. This caused the bridge to be closed for more than 24-hours.
A team has since been working overtime to get the bridge opened again to vehicular traffic.
While the bridge was reopened to “light” traffic from 14:00hrs today, more repairs need to be carried out.
When asked, the DHB Corporation Head could not put a figure to the expenses incurred.
“We are still looking and we are still discovering [issues], so we cannot put a number. At the end of the day when we finish, we will take all the sheets and compile them together and say this all the equipment, this is all the material, this is all the manpower, this is all the cost now,” Adams stated.
He explained that the damage to the bridge is greater than what was expected.
“When we got this morning to start working, we realised that we had some difficulties. We mentioned that there were nine anchors to reconnect yesterday. Between yesterday and this morning that number changed, that number went up to somewhere about sixteen,” Adams stated.
Investigations revealed that the barge that crashed into the Demerara Harbour Bridge was not anchored in a designated position.
Reports are that the vessel started drifting from Diamond/Grove area after it broke away from its anchor.
