By Mortz C. Ortigoza
I have a one-on-one interview recently with the top honcho of the
Department of Public Works & Highway who covers the town where the 490
meters long steel bridge that collapsed due to an overloaded dump truck
ferrying a sand.
4th District Engineering Office’s Chief Simplicio D. Gonzales told me that he was not sanctioned when I posed to him if he was reprimanded by his superiors in the regional and national offices of the DPWH because of the tragedy at the bridge in Bayambang, Pangasinan.
Two trucks - one of them overloaded - fall after the Carlos Romulo Bridge in Brgy. Wawa in Bayambang, Pangasinan collapsed. Photo Credit: Rappler.com |
He blamed the driver of the 63.5 tons overloaded 12- wheeler dump truck
as the culprit that cause a portion of the 20 tons’ capacity 1945 vintage Carlos
P. Romulo Bridge or Wawa Bridge in Barangay Wawa, Bayambang, Pangasinan to fall
with the big truck and an Elf truck that followed it as
seen on the television.
“Alam
mo ba ang overloaded niya (dump truck) ang capacity niya? 30 cubic meters
equivalent to 48 tons. Buhangin niya 30 cubic meters ay equivalent sa 48 tons.
Ang truck equivalent sa 15.5 tons,” he told me at his office as he
juxtaposed the 63.5 tons to the vulnerable 20 tons’ capacity bridge.
He disclosed to me that he and his staff did a diligent inspection every time a fortuitous event like
an earthquake hit the area:
“Nag ini-inspeksiyon
kami. Walang mga indication na may mga defect kasi after ng earthquake
ini-inspeksiyon iyan”.
District Engineer Gonzales was terse that the crumbled
bridge was the doing of a negligent driver who drove overloaded despite the not
more than 20-ton (2,000 kilos) limit.
“Oo twenty ton andoon standard namin iyan”.
Before the portion of Wawa bridge fell down, there were three bridges that fell in Catigbian town in Bohol; in Davao City; and in Majayjay town,
Laguna since last year.
“It is time to evaluate
the safety of our bridges,” Minority Floor Leader Senator Koko Pimentel
exhorted after the one in Bayambang collapsed last Thursday.
The negligent if not unwary driver of the big rig could
either be driving without professional license or bought illegally his license –as
a common practice – to miscreant officials of the Land Transportation Office
who live on sleaze.
Their shortcomings did not only cost tens if not hundreds of
millions of pesos damaged government structure (a meter of a concrete bridge
cost the government P1 million according to Gonzales) or their gruesome death
being pinned by steel and concrete underneath.
Cruising a vehicle on a bridge needs common sense. A heavy
truck driver should see first the 20-ton signage in the approach before he enters
it.
When I was growing up in the middle and late 1970s in my hometown at M’lang, Cotabato Province during the Christian-Moro War, I saw how discernment guide those soldier-drivers in shunning to cross the town's more or less 10-ton bridge with their armored personnel carriers like the American made M113A1s, 13.6 metric tons (combat load) AIFV-25 infantry vehicles, and tanks – probably the 25 tons Light M-41 Walker Bulldog tank - whenever they escorted those dozens screaming M809 Series 5-ton six-by-six (G908) U.S made trucks that carried the infantrymen for a battle somewhere in Maguindanao Province.
Those armored vehicles would descend to the bank of the river,
crossed the river bed, and ascend the other low level bank with their caterpillar tread or tank tread “wheels”.
Disregarding the tonnage limit of my rustic town’s wooden
bridge and crossed it would cost those behemoths and their imprudent drivers to have a free fall
to their death underneath.
They were far cry salamabit to the careless driver of that big truck in Pangasinan that fell down but still fortunate that it spared its passengers in meeting San Pedro or Satan in the afterlife.
Is a reckless imprudence criminal and civil cases resulting to millions of pesos' damage government property in the offing against the driver and his employer? That son of a gun I forgot to ask the DPWH's top honcho.
(Send comment to totomortz@yahoo.com)
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