Five days after the collapse of the Piggatan Bridge in Alcala town in Cagayan, the Department of Public Works and Highways on Saturday, October 11, allowed truck owners to remove sacks of construction materials and other cargo from their vehicles still stuck at the bridge.
The items were retrieved by their owner but were supervised, monitored, and checked by DPWH workers and the police for documentation and inventory.
On Friday, October 10, 650 sacks of palay in another trailer truck owned by Enriquez Trucking and driven by Jonathan Relos, 41, were also retrieved for re-drying. The palay was to be sold to a wholesale rice trader in Cauayan City in Isabela at a price of P12.80 a kilo, which was higher than the prevailing P11 a kilo in Cagayan. The goods were transferred to another truck brought by the company.
‘The sacks of palay grains have been wet due to the past rains and, as expected, about half of these would turn into waste as these are rotting now. However, we can still salvage about half and will sell to recoup some losses,’ Relos said in Ilocano on Friday.
Relos said the incident caused him a major financial setback and he still does not know how to recoup his losses.
The DPWH in Cagayan has assured that it would prioritize the towing of the two trailer trucks and two other trucks from the collapsed bridge.
As this developed, construction workers have been working round-the-clock to build the detour bridge beside the collapsed Piggatan Bridge, hoping to finish it in a two-month period as promised by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon.
DPWH-Cagayan Valley Regional Director Mathias Malenab earlier said they were constructing a sturdier detour bridge with a 40-ton capacity, higher than the collapsed bridge’s 18-ton capacity.
Dizon earlier promised that the detour bridge would be ‘an immediate solution’ to ease the economic burden in the town, which was saddled by the bridge collapse.
Authorities earlier surmised that Piggatan Bridge, which linked Alcala to other towns in Cagayan, collapsed on October 6 because the four trucks that were going through it, carrying large amounts of palay and construction materials, were allegedly overloaded