The traffic on Mahatma Gandhi setu, damaged yesterday, was normalised today with the Road Construction Department's officials repairing the damaged portion.
"The damaged portion of the via-duct (approach road) of the bridge has been repaired completely on a war footing basis. Engineers repaired it with epoxy concrete besides covering it with iron plate. The traffic has become normal since 10 am today," Road Construction Department's (RCD) Chief Engineer (Monitoring) Manoranjan Kumar Sinha told PTI.
The barricade, which was put up on the damaged portion reducing the width of 7 meter carriage way into 3.5 meter, has been removed, thus opening the entire carriage way of 7 meter for the traffic, Sinha said adding that barricading had narrowed the deck slab's width to 3.5 meter for vehicles to pass on.
It may be noted that a portion was damaged over an area of one meter in width and 2.5 meter in length on Patna side near pillar number 16 of the viaduct's western flank yesterday, Sinha said while making it clear that pillar number 46 of the Gandhi setu has not not been damaged at all.
There are altogether 29 pillars of via-duct from Patna side while the bridge has a total of 46 pillars. Pillar number one starts from Hajipur side while pillar number 46 ends at Patna side.
Panic gripped the area yesterday when the news spread that pillar number 46 of the Gandhi setu, which connects north Bihar to south Bihar, had been damaged.
The incident occurred at 11 am, thus halting the traffic movement for an hour yesterday.
Soon after the incident, a technical team and engineers of state road construction department's NH Division rushed to the spot and inspected the damaged portion.
Asked why the protion of the via duct was damaged, Sinha said that it was because of heavy load of vehciles on the Gandhi setu which is crumbling under heavy traffic pressure.
Referring to the initial report of the IIT Roorkee which is, at present, inspecting the bridge for assessing the feasibility of laying steel super structure, the Chief Engineer said that the initial report of the team suggests that the pillars can easily take off the load of steel structure. The team would submit its final report by the end of July, he said.
