Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Struc­tur­al en­gi­neers are vow­ing to take le­gal steps if the Gov­ern­ment does not re­lease the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal sur­vey of the site for the $1.5 bil­lion Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal.The hos­pi­tal is be­ing built in Preysal near the earth­quake-prone Cen­tral Range fault line.The en­gi­neers are ex­pect­ed to meet to­day to for­malise a re­port to send to Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan and Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, ex­press­ing their con­cern over the hos­pi­tal's de­sign and re­quest­ing a copy of the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port.

A ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port de­scribes site con­di­tions to guide the en­gi­neers on the de­sign and con­struc­tion method­ol­o­gy for a project.En­gi­neers said through the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port, which in­cludes soil analy­sis and ge­o­log­i­cal map­ping of the hos­pi­tal site, they can de­ter­mine if suf­fi­cient earth­quake-re­sis­tance pa­ra­me­ters were fac­tored in­to the hos­pi­tal de­sign by the US-based ar­chi­tec­tur­al firm, HKS, which is crit­i­cal giv­en the hos­pi­tal's lo­ca­tion near the earth­quake fault line.

Khan, in a text mes­sage sent to the T&T Guardian on Mon­day, said the en­gi­neers can re­quest the re­port from Ude­cott.The en­gi­neers, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, said if the re­port is not re­leased they have in­struct­ed their at­tor­neys to ap­ply to get it un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA).Sources in­di­cat­ed that the lo­cal ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neer­ing firm which did the re­port has been warned against re­leas­ing it.

The en­gi­neers' de­ci­sion was tak­en on Mon­day dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing called to dis­cuss the in­for­ma­tion re­leased to the me­dia com­ing out of their meet­ing with Khan and Mooni­lal on Fri­day in Port-of-Spain. The meet­ing was called to dis­cuss con­cerns they raised about the hos­pi­tal site.

"We are fear­ful that the coun­try could end up with an­oth­er project like the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um project. Tax­pay­ers will lose a tremen­dous amount of mon­ey be­cause of the lack of con­sul­ta­tion in this mat­ter," one of the en­gi­neers con­tend­ed yes­ter­day.A week ago, the T&T Guardian high­light­ed the en­gi­neers' and seis­mol­o­gists' con­cerns in an ex­clu­sive re­port, af­ter it was re­vealed that the hos­pi­tal was be­ing con­struct­ed near the fault line, which ex­perts say has the po­ten­tial to de­liv­er an earth­quake of mag­ni­tude 7.5 or above.

But af­ter the meet­ing on Fri­day, both Khan and Mooni­lal said the ex­perts' fears about the build­ing de­sign spec­i­fi­ca­tions were ad­dressed and both sides had agreed the hos­pi­tal should be built at the site.An Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) re­lease is­sued on Mon­day as­sured that fears ex­pressed by the ex­perts were "put to rest" at Fri­day's meet­ing.But the en­gi­neers say at the meet­ing they raised more con­cerns, which would on­ly be ad­dressed if they are al­lowed to analyse the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ude­cott re­lease, the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Unit, led by act­ing di­rec­tor Dr Joan Latch­man, not­ed on Fri­day "that a com­pre­hen­sive ge­ot­ech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed by a high­ly re­spect­ed and in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny and their re­port re­sult­ed from re­con­nais­sance sur­veys; de­tailed topo­graph­ic sur­veys; 15 bore­holes; nine test pits, a rig­or­ous lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing pro­gramme; desk­top stud­ies among oth­er tenets."

Ude­cott in­sist­ed in its re­lease that HKS, ar­chi­tects for the fa­cil­i­ty, "used the seis­mic de­sign pa­ra­me­ters as set out in the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port in­clu­sive of sur­face dis­place­ment and liq­ue­fac­tion."In the event of a ma­jor earth­quake, the Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal de­sign will al­low for con­ti­nu­ity of op­er­a­tions, care of pa­tients and re­ceipt of ca­su­al­ties and those in need of health care," Ude­cott added.

The en­gi­neers have since said they "were re­li­ably in­formed that the ge­ot­ech­ni­cal re­port may be flawed and could de­lay the project if this was found to be true."Some con­sul­tants at Mon­day's en­gi­neers' meet­ing al­so in­di­cat­ed that it is in the best in­ter­est of HKS to do a due dili­gence and to col­lab­o­rate with the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre, which is the au­thor­i­ty for pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion on earth­quake haz­ard maps.

They are al­so call­ing on Mooni­lal to en­sure that Ude­cott fol­low the same method­ol­o­gy as the con­trac­tors on the Point Fortin high­way and to com­mis­sion a prob­a­bilis­tic re­port of the Cou­va hos­pi­tal site be­fore start­ing con­struc­tion.