President Marcos concluded that the Cabagan-Santa Maria Bridge in Isabela collapsed due to design flaw.
In an interview after he conducted an inspection of the collapsed bridge on Thursday, March 6, Marcos said aside from the bridge being poorly designed, it's funding was also reduced which led to more problems.
"Ang ending nito, ang puno’t dulo nito, design flaw. It is a design flaw, mali yung design (The ending, the root cause was design flaw. It is a design flaw, the design was not right)," Marcos said in an ambush interview.
"Ang history kasi nito, dapat ang funding nito was supposed to be, ang project cost nito is 1.8 billion. So, binawasan to under 1 billion para makamura (The history of this was, it was supposed to have a project cost of P1.8 billion. So, it was reduced to under P1 billion in order to spend less)," Marcos added.
"Design is really weak," he stressed.
Although it turned out that the bridge was designed poorly, Marcos said the whole process of construction was done "by the book" and was "up to specifications" but the design.
He also bared that during the construction, "moving and weak" portion of the project was already observed, thus, the implementation of retrofitting which brought the project cost to P1.2 billion.
"So, the whole process, okay naman, yung construction, yung contractor sinundan naman ang plano, by the book naman yung kanyang ginawa, up to specifications naman yung kanilang ginawa. Iyun lang, yung specifications, mali (So, the whole process, the construction was okay, the contractor followed the plan, by the book, up to specifications. But the specifications were wrong)," Marcos said.
"So this is a design problem," he added.
Marcos also pointed out that it was not rocket science why the bridge fell when three heavy-loaded trucks passed through it when it can only accommodate up to 44-tons.
"And then also, those trucks should never have been on the bridge," he said.
"We have to be more careful about the monitoring, yung mga load kasi ganyan ang problema e. Kung 44 tons ang sinasabi, sasakayan mo ng 200 plus tons, medyo hindi nakakapagtaka na ganyan ang mangyayari (that kind of load was the problem. If can only accommodate 44 tons, yet 200 plus tons of load passed by, it was not surprising that it happened)," he pointed out.
'We have to go back'
The government has no choice but to go back to square one after the bridge collapsed, Marcos said.
He lamented that by trying to spend less, the bridge became useless.
"So, wala (nothing). We have no choice. We have to go back," Marcos said.
"So yung nagtitipid tayo, tinipid natin sa P1.8 billion, useless. Ngayon babalik na naman tayo, gagastos na naman tayo ng malaki. Papalitan natin 'yang mga support, papalitan, parang nagtayo na naman tayo ng bagong tulay (So, we tried to trim the cost down to P1.8 billion, it became useless. Now, we have to go back, and we will spend a huge amount of money again. We will replace the support, it is as if we are going to build a new bridge again)," he lamented.
The Chief Executive also said he does not want to play the blame game at the moment, stressing that the problem needs to be fixed first.
"[Y]ou know I always have a saying, fix the problem, not the blame. Ayusin muna natin yung problema (Let's solve the problem first)," he said when asked who should be held liable over the bridge collapse.
"Believe me, we will find out who is responsi--Who is responsible is basically who made the design. Because their design is poor, look what happened," he added.