‘San Juanico rehab contractor must also pay for the damage’

Leyte Rep. Ted Failon pointed to gross negligence as the cause of the freak accident that damaged a portion of the San Juanico Bridge, the country’s largest span, and demanded that the principal contractor of the bridge’s P700-million rehabilitation program be also held liable for the damage.

"It should not just be the owner of the wayward barge, but also the sub-contractor that leased it as well as the principal contractor of the San Juanico Bridge rehabilitation program which should be made to pay for the damage," Failon said in a statement.

In a report to Public Works and Highways Secretary Simeon Datumanong, DPWH officials in Eastern Visayas initially placed the damage to the bridge at P25 million.

At about 5 p.m. of Sept. 22, the barge LCT Challenger slammed into one of San Juanico’s concrete foundations — Pier 35 — damaging two spans of deck slab.

The barge earlier had docked at a jetty near Abutment A of the bridge but it broke loose because of the strong current that ordinarily comes with the turn of tides in the San Juanico Strait. It drifted away and eventually hit Pier 35.

"The dangerous changing of tides of San Juanico Strait are legendary and for the barge’s crew and project contractors to have taken this peril lightly while working on the bridge’s rehab is outright negligence and foolhardy," Failon said.

He added, "Extra careful measures should have been adopted to prevent such accidents."

The late former President Ferdinand Marcos built San Juanico as a special birthday present to his wife, former First Lady Imelda Marcos, a native of Leyte. The 2.2-kilometer long bridge links the islands of Leyte and Samar.

LCT Challenger was leased to Cavdeal Construction, one of the San Juanico rehabilitation project’s sub-contractors and suppliers, for the transport of aggregates needed in the project whose principal contractor is Sumitomo, a Japanese construction company.

The DPWH report said Pier 35 appears to have tilted about three degrees to the Samar side. Cracks have also been noticed on Pier 36.

The concrete deck slab between Piers 34 and 36 are misaligned, it added.