A sec­tion of the North­side Road in Cas­tara, To­ba­go, has been closed tem­porar­i­ly to heavy traf­fic for sev­er­al days, be­cause it has been com­pro­mised by weeks of heavy rain­fall, and must un­der­go emer­gency re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion work. 

“As a re­sult of the high risk as­so­ci­at­ed with the fail­ure of the road­way, the road­way will be closed tem­porar­i­ly to all traf­fic from … Tues­day 30 Au­gust 2022 at 6 pm,” said a re­lease from the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment (DIQUD).

DIQUD notes “a Ro­ta­tion­al Fail­ure of the slope” has oc­curred, prompt­ing the tem­po­rary clo­sure. It hopes to re­store “ba­sic func­tion­al­i­ty to this es­sen­tial road­way” in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

The Di­vi­sion ex­pects to com­plete emer­gency re­pair works by Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 4, once “good weath­er is ex­pe­ri­enced”.

“Res­i­dents of Cas­tara and en­vi­rons [are ad­vised] that the North­side Road, be­tween Cas­tara Down Riv­er and the ‘Wel­come to Cas­tara’ sign, is cur­rent­ly tem­porar­i­ly closed to all heavy traf­fic on­ly. This clo­sure is due to the fail­ure of a por­tion of the road­way which has made the road­way treach­er­ous at this time,” the Di­vi­sion ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, all mo­torists at­tempt­ing to ac­cess this area are asked to utilise al­ter­na­tive routes:

■   Dri­vers on the low­er end of the North­side Road are asked to utilise the Bel­mont Road (Ma­son Hall) un­to the Wind­ward Road, then un­to the Rox­bor­ough to Bloody Bay Link Road; and

■   Dri­vers com­ing from the high­er end of the North­side Road are asked to utilise the Bloody Bay to Rox­bor­ough Link Road, then un­to the Wind­ward Road.