Lyonpo Dorji Tshering apologizes for collapse of the Kuri-Gongri Bridge

The MOIT minister Dorji Tshering apologized to the two victims, their families, the people of eastern Dzongkhags, and the nation for the second collapse of the Kuri-Gongri Bridge and took responsibility for the collapse during the 50th Meet the Press.

The minister declared, “I have not seen anything like this in my 20 years of building bridges, and I am quite disappointed by the news. The issue has the Prime Minister upset as well, and he wants to do the right thing and even wanted to fix me.”

The Minister claimed that it is still unclear why the Kuri-Gongri Bridge twice collapsed. However, he claims that after the initial collapse of the bridge on May 23, the truck’s load was wedged between two sides of the bridge, making it impossible for the Ministry to assess the weight and identify what caused the collapse.

According to the Minister, there could be two causes for the Kuri-Gongri bridge to have fallen this time.

“First, it could be a technical failure, a general failure, or a combination of the two. The site is being examined by an independent team, and we anticipate learning the cause of the collapse soon,” said the minister.

The Minister said that the result may be out within ten days of the inspection.

The minister said that the ministry could determine the cause immediately because there were five trucks travelling through the bridge, and three trucks went earlier, followed by two. However, in between the journeys, the fourth truck collapsed, which was a ten-wheeler truck.

He said that they could not claim the collapse was due overweight of trucks because the goods they were carrying before and during today’s collapse is washed away.

The minister asserted that he has noted that while bridge loading capacities are set for 20 years, truck loading capacities continue to increase.

The minister made it clear that even if there were nine stockpiled emergency pieces, the collapse of the bridge was not caused by their use, as they had already been used for other emergency bridge building.

The ministry is now debating whether to build a modular bridge or a Bailey bridge after determining the cause of the collapse.