The country’s top engineer has assured the public that Lisbon’s 25th of April Bridge is not in danger of collapse. However, if repair work is not completed soon, rail traffic will have to be reduced.Carlos Pina, the President of the National Institute of Civil Engineering, (LNEC) was reporting to the Parliamentary Committee on Economy and Public Works after a request from the CDS-PP, the PCP and the PSD, on a report on the need for repairs to the bridge which are scheduled to take one year to start and over two years to complete.
Although the term "collapse" is used in the report, Pina assured MPs the bridge does not actually run the risk of collapsing.
"The word 'collapse' is used in engineering terms in various contexts. At the bridge, there already has been a collapse in those areas with cracks.
“What is referred to in this report is that there may be a collapse of some structural element such as a steel plate on top of a beam. This is the collapse that is referenced in the paragraph where the word ‘collapse’ is used," explained the engineer.
However, Pina assured MPs that the situation is “not immediately evolving into a serious situation for the bridge.”
“Small collapses may occur, small details, for example in a zone where a bolt is less tight, without jeopardising the functionality of the work if it occurs during the time we envisage for its execution, which is about three years,” said the engineer, adding that "LNEC will always be monitoring the behaviour of the work in order to detect abnormal behaviour."
Carlos Pina said that rail traffic on the bridge has been a strain on the structure. If the work does not start in the short term, "mitigation measures, such as the reduction of rail traffic, will have to be adopted."
The work schedule gives one year to start the project and two years for the work to be carried out, "so three years, maybe a little more if the work is a little delayed. But by then the most troublesome areas will have been fixed," said the Institute chairman.
Comments
The question is how much risk?
When politicians ignore engineers for too long, the risk of disaster increases dramatically.
However, when giving press releases, we will get the political version, not the engineering one.
Unlike banks, physical objects like bridges don't come with a 'too big to fail' label.