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  • 3 days ago
TRC's Manager of Operations and Construction, Murray Russell, updated the media about the recent flooding in Somerton, on Tuesday. Video by Gareth Gardner
Transcript
00:00The repair of the bridge itself should be not overly complicated, the concrete
00:05structure appears to still be in good condition. The river itself has a steep
00:11vertical face on the northern bank and obviously that's eroded and started to
00:16push to the north and it's allowed water to get around the northern abutment of
00:20the bridge so initially we'll just try to do a temporary repair where we can get
00:25some earthworks in and re-establish road access but a more permanent fix is going
00:31to need some substantial rot protection and erosion protection to be able to make
00:36sure that that northern abutment stays in place.
00:39It's really difficult to say how quickly it'll be repaired.
00:43Whatever the river is flowing the way that it is, it makes it almost impossible for us to get in
00:49there and do any earthworks so it's really going to be a wait and see.
00:53So we'd like to think that it would be back with temporary access within the
00:58next few weeks but you know we certainly can't guarantee it depending on the weather.
01:01We've got a 3,000km road network, it takes us a while to get around that and some of those
01:07locations have been quite isolated. We've got some concerns about what we might find up above
01:12Limbride. The Coburn River flowed very full, it's obviously the highest flow up there that
01:17we've had in nearly 20 years and there's a couple of bridges up there that are susceptible to damage
01:22so we'll be getting up there hopefully sometime today or tomorrow and assess what that looks like.
01:27We'll see what that looks like.

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