The heavy showers that caused schools to close their doors temporarily have ceased, and the Ministry of Education has announced that classes will resume tomorrow on all levels, except for select schools in the Toledo district.
But during the rains, one road that had to be partially closed was the newly built Coastal Road, which opened in July. Is it possible that the rains may have caused an infrastructural damage already?
MIDH's Chief Engineer said no and today via Zoom he told us why they chose to temporarily close the highway.
Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer
"Based on the intense rainfall that the country have received over the last few days we had to recommend that a section of the Coastal Highway which is the section near to Democracia be closed to vehicular traffic, because we were monitoring the flood way within that section of the road and we observed that the Sibun River was raising quite rapidly and so in an abundance of caution we recommended that the section between Democracia and Manattee Bridge be closed just for the safety of the motorist passing in that area."
"It dissipated over the night I guess, because we had checked yesterday evening around 4:30 and at that point in time it was about a foot above the flood way."
"If you have driven along the Coastal Highway you would notice that we have 3 flood way; 2 located at Sibun Bridge and 2 located at Corn House Bridge. Those flood ways are design to be flooded as their name suggest and that's because the Sibun River spreads and it rises very quickly in times of flooding."
"So from what we saw the flood way basically has some gauges which goes from zero to 5 foot and so around 4:30, 4:45 thereabouts yesterday it was already at a foot and so we wanted to ensure that we advised the motor public precisely, so that they don't go and drive through it when rises higher than that level, because that would cause vehicles to be swipe off the highway."
