Bulldozer Causes Damage to Coastal Plane Highway; Temporary Repairs Underway

There was a traffic incident on the Coastal Plane Highway, where a bulldozer dislodged from the tow truck that was towing it. The bulldozer caused damage to the recently rehabilitated highway and several hundred meters of guard rail. Up to news time tonight, crews from the Ministry of Infrastructure Development were still on site conducting remedial works. Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer for the Ministry, explained that they will have to do temporary repairs due to the weather, but the damages should be rectified within the next few weeks. 

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer, MIDH: “A truck towing a trailer had a bulldozer on the trailer and it seems as though the trailer got dislodged from the truck and damaged the load pavement along the Coastal Highway at approximately at mile 34 and that also resulted in extensive damage to the guardrails as well. So at this point in time the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing road maintenance unit is currently doing some remedial works to the damaged pavement however because of the rainfalls that we have over the county at this point in time we have to try and see how best we could rectify that as a temporary measure and thereafter we will come back and do permanent repairs to the pavement. We will try our best to make it possible for vehicles to traverse the area so that’s why we’re doing something temporary but definitely we have to do some permanent works and that would definitely involve repairing at least 100 meters of the guardrail and I think we have at least about 50 meters of the existing pavement that has been damaged. As you are aware that’s fairly new highway and so the gorge that we have within pavement is very substantial so we will basically have to start from an entire section and redo it over because if we just patch it then more than likely that will be the area that we will have further weakness and that could develop further into more potholes. So the idea is to try and get it done as soon as we can however that will take us maybe about two to three weeks for us to get that under control.”

Moody says that preliminary estimates on the damage are around thirty thousand dollars, and that the ministry will be working to recover that money through insurance.

Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer, MIDH: “What I’ve been doing since late last year is that for every accident that occurs I have MIDH road maintenance team recoding and gathering information from these vehicular accidents interns of insurances, the licenses for the vehicles and so we’ve been working closely with the Deputy Commissioner of Police for him to assist us with these police reports and so we’re forwarding these claims back to the insurance companies. Several of them have been working closely with us and repaying the government of Belize for these assets that have been damaged but it is something that we have to continue doing because as s government and as a ministry we cannot really afford to be rectifying and correcting all these damages that are occurring on a regular basis. We should have an estimate within another week or so however just based on the preliminary numbers that I have seen a hundred meters of guardrail for about $300 per meter so you could do the calculations there just for the guardrail. And then we have to do the rectification of the pavement. It’s not just the section that was damaged we’d have to scarify a larger section and so definitely you’re looking at maybe at least $30,000 right there just for that damage that has occurred. So we will definitely have to send that claim to the insurance however as a ministry we will have to do the repair internally and then try and reclaim those damage costs and then send that back into the consolidated funds.”

The mishap happened near mile thirty three.  No one was injured in the incident./