RELIEF at last.
There was a sense of normalcy in the villages of Toco, Matelot and Cumaca yesterday as the bulk of visitors to Trinidad’s northeast coast returned to their homes after days of impatient waiting following the collapse of the major bridge over the Balandra River on Saturday afternoon.
By around 3 a.m. yesterday the Bailey bridge was finally opened to the public and the traffic flowed almost nonstop for nearly an hour. The bridge is 110 feet long and the road width is 14 feet, two inches.
Maximum weight permitted on the bridge is 25 tons.
When the Express arrived at the bridge site around midday yesterday the large 350-ton multi-lift Junior Sammy crane which dominated the skyline since Sunday was gone as were the large trucks both from the company as well as the Ministry of Works.
The events of the traumatic weekend leading into the beginning of the week began with a decision to drive a crane on a weak bridge on a very rainy Saturday.
What happened was that a 50-tonne crane used in the construction of a new bridge parallel to the old one was crossing over the old bridge which collapsed, sending the crane and the dilapidated structure into the Balandra River.
No one was injured but the rain poured well into Saturday night which made coordinating the recovery on site a nightmare.
The Junior Sammy Group was called into action because, according to one of their senior officials who spoke to the Express on Sunday, they were the only ones on the island who could pull off such a recovery on such short notice, given the conditions.
Then there was the human element. The villages beyond the Balandra bridge, although sparsely populated, added up to approximately 4,000 men, women and children.
Because of weekend rains some of these villages were without power.
Adding to the callaloo of confusion were the scores of visitors. Some came for the weekend complete with tents, food and an extra supply of clothes while others were there for the day.
Both categories of visitors were inconvenienced but moreso the ’day trippers’.
The ones who popped in for a visit including entire families just had the clothes on their backs and their cars.
The total number stranded was around 250-plus.
It was the MP for the area, Indra Sinanan Ojah-Maharaj, and the area’s councillor, Terry Rondon, who along with several government bodies as well as the area’s residents who intervened on behalf of these visitors.
School buildings were opened and supplies of food and water were hastily arranged but this didn’t kick in until Sunday.
A tired Rondon said yesterday that he along with MP Ojah-Maharaj planned to lobby government for a proper disaster centre for the Toco area, ’for an occasion like this we can fend for ourselves’.
He explained that on a long weekend, ’there would be 3,000 to 4,000 people in the area and the simple reason is because the area is safe and the villagers tend to have respect for those coming from the outside. They (Toco residents) are very kind to visitors and we encourage people to come to visit us’.
He added, ’We need a base in Toco because in a case like this (the bridge collapse) we were short of beds and mattresses and this is a wake-up call to make sure that we have a proper plan in place for this community.’
He said that he wanted to assure the public to ’come back to Toco. Come back!’
When the Express visited the northeast coast yesterday the shelters which once held scores of the almost 250-plus stranded visitors were empty, their gates locked.
