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Roadways Turned Into Riverways
posted (June 19, 2020)
That Police presence was needed throughout the flood zones where frustration was high and traffic was extremely slow.

And in our conversation with the Ministry's zone engineer, we got an overview of yesterday's desperate situation across the George Price, Hummingbird, and Coastal Highways.

Irving Thimbrel, Senior Executive Engineer, Central Zone Engineer, MOW
"Spanish Lookout is because of the swelling of the river. That bridge was built as a bridge that can function even though water go over it. It's not something that we want to encourage, but it was design that way and I think it was done in collaboration with the Mennonite community, so I think it was a project that brought together the Mennonite community and the ministry of works. So from time to time that bridge would flood, but we have 2 bridges, up and down stream that will allow people to still access the Spanish Lookout area. We have the Pino Cawich bridge in Roaring Creek and we have the bridge at Bullet Tree Falls, so when we had that 100 year flood some years ago, people were still able to access Spanish Lookout. Now that they have the farmer's express way also, that tend to have some flooding at the beginning, but that would allow also for people to move over where all the farms are on the other side of the river. So what happens is that the increase in intensity of the rains caused these structures to not able to withstand the volume of water that they are going to be exposed to and that's so we have the floodings. People are complaining about some of the bridges, but they must understand it's a group of analysis that has to be done. One is the scoring, the scoring is that the water it is passing under the structure, because of the water way, it creates a turbulence at the base and then that tends to score away, so not one of our bridges went done, because they were properly design and we did not have any issue at all. You could see the violent way this water was moving, for example at Cave Branch the water was moving extremely fast, but we can go today and still find that structure. The bridge wasn't overtap because it was design for. That's the main problem that we have with the area by Kiki Witz, is that it forms a part of the basin that drains Belmopan. It would have been because of what we called the encrypt and then we have decrypt. The decrypt would be that portion of road, a project that was done to identify vulnerable areas and so these were the 2 first project that supposed to have been done. If you are following what has happened with the Covid-19, the funding that will be use for the response for the government was that second project, the crypt project. That project also would have been including that area that we are talking about."

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