Flood Waters Erode Portion of Philip Goldson Highway

The inundation of the northern portion of the country left much of the soil saturated and that, coupled with non-stop rains, eventually eroded a portion of the Philip Goldson Highway near mile twenty-nine. Marion Ali and Chris Mangar paused briefly on their way to Crooked Tree to capture the repair works that were already in progress at the location. Here’s that report.

Marion Ali, Reporting

What could have potentially been a life-threatening situation near mile twenty-nine on the Philip Goldson Highway on Wednesday night was soon brought under control. It was caused by the heavy downpour across northern Belize, as Chief Met Officer, Ronald Gordon explained.

Ronald Gordon

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist

“There was some flooding across the country and some damage to infrastructure, especially when it comes to roads and culverts in some areas.”

No one ended up in a traffic mishap as a result of the road damage because personnel from the Ministry of Infrastructure Development were on site from very early.

Efrain Alpuche

Efrain Alpuche, District Technical Supervisor, MIDH

“We got reports during the course of the night from the chairman of Biscayne that we had a washout- a compromised culvert. We responded as quickly as possible and we got in touch with Teichroeb and Sons in a collaborative effort to fix it. It’s not a permanent fix, but it’s a fix so pedestrians can cross and get through today. What we normally do, we clean it out and we put boulders so we can still have some filtration of water underneath and then we put a layer of hardcore all-in and then we compact it and that should stay for a while until we could get the culverts put in expeditiously.”

Efrain Alpuche, the District Technical Supervisor for the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing, explained that over the course of the next week or so, a more permanent surface will replace what they have in place now.

Efrain Alpuche

“The culverts are quite old, to be honest, and the Ministry knows that. And we’ve been embarking on getting them replaced by concrete culverts, which are being made but everybody knows concrete takes a time to cure before we can actually use them. This part of the road is a new appendum for the Ministry from mile twenty-eight down to mile four. So it will be an entire upgrade of the highway, which will include installation of culverts, upgrading of the highways, and that sort of thing.”

Marion Ali For News Five.