Capital -- Four bridges collapsed in different parts of the country last week due to flash floods sparked by torrential rains in the highlands. The huge body of water created enormous pressure on the bridges that collapse.

Three of the bridges are in the Afar Regional State near Mile Town, 531 kilometers northeast of Addis Ababa, namely the Mile River Bridge, the Wuhama River Bridge and the Bruser River Bridge. Between the three rivers, a small town, Chifra, is trapped with no access to roads that lead in or out of the town.

The fourth bridge that collapsed is located in the Amhara Regional State and was connecting Bahir Dar and Gondar. The heavy floods not only devastated the infrastructure but also killed nineteen people and affected tens of thousands of households.
Samson Wondimu, Public Relations Head of the Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA), told Capital that the authority is moving to construct emergency steel bridges in places of the three bridges that collapsed in the Afar Regional State, until the formal construction of the bridges are completed within the next two years.

According to Samson, the collapse of the bridges has interrupted the traffic flow that connects the northern part of the country with Djibouti. He said that traffic flow from Addis Ababa to Djibouti is not interrupted and can be continued as usual.
Meanwhile, truckers on the way from Djibouti find themselves stuck midway. “The authority has recommended a detour and advised drivers to use the Woldia-Kombolcha route,” Samson said. The road leading to the bridges was actually nearing completion by Sur Construction with an outlay of 770 million birr.
Samson said the bridge that connects Bahir Dar and Gondar, Infiranze Bridge, also collapsed on Sunday August 22, and is closed for traffic. The authority is currently transporting steel bars to the place to construct a temporary bridge. According to Samson, the bridge will be fully reconstructed this budget year.

The collapsed bridges underline the need for rehabilitation of bridges along the road network as mentioned in the Road Sector Development Program (RSDP). Ethiopia currently has 44,974 bridges that are functional and out of these 4,407 bridges are more than four meters and 40,567 bridges less than four meters in length. The longest bridge in the country is the Beshilo Bridge that measures 319 meters, followed by the Abay Bridge, also known as the Hidase Bridge, with a length of 303 meters. Both bridges are found in Amhara Regional State.
According to the authority’s bridge management system used to analyze the condition of bridges in the country, only 41 percent of these bridges shall remain in good condition and functional by 2011. By then, 36 percent of them will require rehabilitation and 23 percent will be in critical condition, unless adequate rehabilitation and intervention is conducted regularly.
Currently, 79 percent of the bridges around the country are in good condition, while 20 percent are inadequate and need rehabilitation, and one percent are in critically bad condition and need immediate intervention.

Meanwhile, the unprecedented amount of rainfall has made it difficult to anticipate the current disaster. The heavy flooding in the Amhara Regional State has displaced more than 8,000 people. According to reports, the floods hit the Dawa Chefa, Hartuma Fursi and Bishee Edida districts after three days of torrential rain killed 19 people. Crops planted on about 6,132 hectares of land have been inundated or washed away, adding pressure on emergency relief workers.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), some 53,237 households in Oromiya special zone, South Wollo, North Wollo, South Gondar, North Gondar and North Shoa zones in Amhara have been affected by the recent rains, with 1,960 households temporarily displaced. It also alerted of the risk of flooding in western, southwestern and central parts of Ethiopia in September.

SOURCE:CAPITAL