Road back to normal after bridge removed

THE Manacor road at Montuiri was back to normal 24 hours after the bridge on the outskirts of Montuiri collapsed on to the road as it was being reinforced with concrete. Experts will now make virtual simulations of all the steps followed in the execution of the work from the positioning of the structure to its collapse last Saturday morning. Experts from the administration, the construction company, and the security procedures department, will use “all technical means to find out what happened”, said the director of the Council of Majorca's Roads department, Gonzalo Aguiar. In addition to the virtual simulations, all the materials used in the construction will be analysed, the steel used in the structure, the concrete and the framework. “Something failed but it is too soon to speculate on what happened”, he said. The work to clear the road and restore traffic to normal finished at 8am on Sunday morning, after nearly 24 hours of laborious work to dismantle and take away the structure, which is 30 metres long by six wide. In fact, the steel bridge had to be cut into three parts so that the cranes could lift it.
With regard to the fact that the road had remained open to traffic while the bridge was being filled with concrete, the head of the Roads department said, “one lane was closed and it was planned to close the other as the work progressed, if a car was on the road when the bridge collapsed it was because there was a mistake”. The cost of the construction of a new bridge and the immense amount of work done on Saturday to remove the bridge will be the responsibility of the Temporary Union of Companies (UTE C-715) who are carrying out the project. “There will be no extra charge to the Council of Majorca”, said Aguiar. The Council of Majorca said that December 2 will remain as the inauguration day for the widening of the road project, “whether the bridge is in place or not”.