Can we handle the truth? We're going to have to. So is the Transport Department. It can start by putting someone in charge of the island's transport infrastructure who isn't going to try to hide problems under [red]a coat of cement.[/red]
Oops. When I found that, it was still free and open.
Here I paste the article as follows:
Contractor says he was never ordered to fix overpass bars
William Marsden, The Gazette
Published: Thursday, May 03, 2007
A senior Transport Quebec engineer claimed yesterday that in 1992 he ordered additional reinforced steel bars to be inserted in the joints of the de la Concorde overpass to strengthen the structure because the original steel was not properly installed.
But there is no evidence in the debris of the fallen structure that the additional steel bars were ever installed and the contractor who supposedly installed them said he never got the order.
Furthermore, evidence before the Johnson Commission hearings into the collapse last Sept. 30 of the overpass indicates that the additional bracing may not have been added because of a lack money.
Tiona Sanogo, 59, who is the senior engineer in charge of all highway structures in Montreal, told the hearings that during repairs to the overpass in 1992 he noticed that the steel reinforcement bars had not been properly installed when the overpass was built in 1970.
He said he order the contractor to install "in several places" additional steel bars to add strength to the support columns of the overpass.
He claimed the work must have been done because permission was given to pour the cement over the bars.
But Primo Scapin, owner of DIMS, which was the company that repaired the joints, said the transport ministry never ordered him to install new steel bars.
He also said that he had suggested the ministry install new neoprene supports because the old ones had deteriorated dropping a section of the bridge about an inch. He said the government didn't have the money to pay for them.
