The Rourkela Steel Plant authorities have started repair work of a bridge and a connectivity road on Tuesday located on the Laing-Mandira dam in Sundargarh district, which collapsed on Monday.
Known as Hamilton bridge, it had been existing for over 50 years and was basically a fabricated bridge standing on a cement concrete structure.
At about 4 pm on Monday, some portion of the structure of the bridge and its connectivity road collapsed going down to more than ten feet below the surface level. Although movement on the route used to be very frequent, luckily no one was travelling during the time.
Excess use of the bridge, mainly by the commercial loaded vehicles moving on the route, is stated to be the cause of collapse of the road since the bridge was not designed to take the load of heavy vehicles like 16-wheeler trucks.
A technical team of the RSP rushed to the spot and sealed the road. Hundreds of villagers, who have been using the route for their daily movement, have been disconnected from the outer world.