Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Op­er­a­tions at San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion's Carib Street Works De­part­ment got off to a late start yes­ter­day, af­ter a sink hole ap­peared in the park­ing lot, caus­ing the evac­u­a­tion of work­ers.

The hole, which mea­sured more than 60 feet in depth, was ob­served on Sat­ur­day when a truck got stuck in the sink­ing as­phalt.

Gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union Er­mine De Bique-Meade said the hole is be­lieved to be part of an un­der­ground wa­ter sys­tem which dates back to 1898.

The in­fra­struc­ture is be­lieved to have been used by the city to pro­vide ac­cess to clean drink­ing wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty.

Ex­press­ing con­cern for the safe­ty of work­ers, De Bique-Meade said there were two oth­er sink­holes on the site, which have been capped. She al­so ex­pressed con­cerns that the new works build­ing, which is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion, could al­so be in dan­ger of col­lapse.

"We want en­gi­neers and ge­ol­o­gists to come here and con­duct prop­er tests be­fore any fur­ther work is done in that build­ing," De Bique-Meade said.

She said that the dri­vers who were af­fect­ed by the sink­hole were trans­ferred to the Skin­ner Park fa­cil­i­ty.

"Con­trac­tors who came to work on these two sec­tions on Sat­ur­day were alarmed be­cause while they were re­mov­ing the Hiab (truck) the ve­hi­cle start­ed to sink. They re­moved the truck and put a bar­rel but it was al­so sink­ing. They ex­ca­vat­ed around the area and in the ex­ca­va­tion we re­al­ized that the hole was filled with wa­ter," De Bique-Meade said.

A sew­er­age truck was used to pump the wa­ter out of the hole but af­ter ex­tract­ing eight loads of wa­ter, De Bique-Meade said, they re­al­ized that the hole was ac­tu­al­ly a well. A pri­vate con­trac­tor was then hired to pump out the wa­ter but the hole kept re­fill­ing.

De Bique-Meade said 20 trucks were re­moved from the yard and sent to Skin­ner Park. A shut­tle was arranged to take the work­ers to their var­i­ous sta­tions.

Ini­tial­ly, De Bique-Meade said, the work­ers planned to cov­er the hole with a steel plate and pave it over with as­phalt but this plan was lat­er aban­doned as the hole grew larg­er.

"We re­al­ize now that the best thing to do is to halt the work and get a ge­ol­o­gist to do test­ing be­fore we at­tempt to cov­er it," she added.

May­or tak­ing no chances with work­ers' safe­ty–

San Fer­nan­do May­or Kaz­im Ho­sein who vis­it­ed the site yes­ter­day said he was tak­ing no chances with work­ers' safe­ty.

"We will be meet­ing with en­gi­neers and we will get of­fi­cials from WASA to ex­am­ine the hole," Ho­sein said. He al­so said that he planned to com­plete the works build­ing which has been un­der con­struc­tion for the past 18 years.

"I wish to as­sure the pub­lic that fol­low­ing the ap­pear­ance of a sink­hole at the cor­po­ra­tion's Carib Street Com­plex, mea­sures have been put in place to pre­vent any dis­rup­tions to the city's san­i­ta­tion and en­gi­neer­ing ser­vices over the com­ing days. The cor­po­ra­tion re­tains ac­cess to a num­ber of ve­hi­cles from the Carib Street Trans­porta­tion Yard and our staff is com­mit­ted to mak­ing every ef­fort to en­sure there are no in­ter­rup­tions to the ser­vices we pro­vide to the res­i­dents of our city," he said.

Ho­sein said the cor­po­ra­tion's En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment was con­duct­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the caus­es of the sink­hole. "I have full con­fi­dence in the cor­po­ra­tion's En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment's abil­i­ty to con­duct this in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the nec­es­sary re­pairs in an ef­fi­cient man­ner. It would be pre­ma­ture and ir­re­spon­si­ble to com­ment on the caus­es of the sink­hole be­fore the En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment com­pletes its in­ves­ti­ga­tion. On­ly a de­tailed in­ves­ti­ga­tion can re­al­ly an­swer that ques­tion and the cor­po­ra­tion is mak­ing this a pri­or­i­ty," he said.

He al­so said the cor­po­ra­tion has re­tained the ser­vices of Caribbean Well Ser­vices Lim­it­ed to as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and re­pair of the sink­hole.

Mean­while, CEO In­dar­jit Singh said he did not fore­see any prob­lems with the un­fin­ished struc­ture.

"This well is new to us but we know about an­oth­er well close by which we capped. These wells are man-made be­cause we saw an over­flow that was clogged," Singh said. He said the cor­po­ra­tion will con­tin­ue to al­low the wa­ter to ac­cu­mu­late and do fur­ther in­spec­tion.