PESHAWAR: The recent incident of the collapsing of Sardaryab bridge on September 10, causing few casualties, occurred due to overloading of a truck carrying 1,100 cement bags weighing 80 tonnes, said Pakhtunkhwa Highways Authority (PKHA).
According to a press release issued by PKHA, the technical team had cited overloading of the truck as a main reason for the incident. It added that the bridge was maintained adequately by the authority and there was no problem in the bridge structure at the time of the incident.
According to details, after the accident, the highway authority efficiently managed to divert the traffic to the alternative routes to ensure smooth flow of traffic.
Furthermore, PKHA arranged four cranes to take the half-sunk truck out of the flowing water, which due to the heavy flow remained unaccomplished. Therefore, the authority had to approach the district administrators for the arrangement of a helicopter to perform the task.
A spokesperson of PKHA accentuated that the authority was in the planning phase to construct a new RCC bridge at the said location, and the construction work will hopefully start in January 2018, when the flow of water will reduce.
The statement further said that PKHA took this opportunity to sensitize the commuters and road users to abide by legal loading rules as excessive load causes damage to the roads. “It apprehends that such incidents cannot be ruled out unless legal loading configuration is followed by the trucks and transporters,” it added.
The department will keep playing its imperative role in road management as it was currently in the process of installing weighing machines and awareness campaign which will certainly avoid the premature damages of road pavements and occurrence of such unfortunate incidents, it said.
