Rehabilitating Highways After Cristóbal
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Rehabilitating Highways After Cristóbal

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Pedro Alcalá By Pedro Alcalá | Senior Journalist & Industry Analyst - Fri, 06/05/2020 - 19:23

Throughout this week, tropical storms Cristóbal and Amanda made landfall in Mexico’s southeastern states. Campeche, Chiapas and Tabasco turned out to be the most affected in infrastructural damage. Oil, gas and port infrastructure in Campeche and Tabasco reported significant damage and service interruptions, but it was these three states’ road infrastructure that needed the most urgent repairs in the wake of devastating weather-derived destruction. 

In the Escarcega-Chetumal highway in Campeche, SCT had to intervene by mandating and coordinating the temporary stopping of all traffic after water levels rose high enough to destroy 60 percent of the road’s concrete surface along kilometer 156. Traffic on one lane was reestablished a few hours later. Emergency repair maneuvers executed by the SCT consisted in the removal of loose and unstable remaining material in an area as deep as 5m, 12m long and 7m wide. The space created then had to be filled by 100kg to 200kg rocks meant to be filtered by rainwater so they can function as a stable base for the layered hydraulic asphalt coating that comes later. Meanwhile, in the Villahermosa-Escarcega highway, water levels rose enough to guarantee a temporary closing of all traffic around kilometer 199, but not enough to significantly damage the physical integrity of the road itself. 

However, these immediate emergency responses only cover the heavily trafficked segments of Mexico’s interstate highway system. Tabasco and Chiapas are both states with significant rural segments in their economies and populations. These communities and activities function in large part through networks of less developed roads that have less access to these kinds of responses. In its article describing these maneuvers, SCT admits that it received three reports of rural roads that were affected by flooded rivers, a particularly common consequence of these weather events in the flat wetlands that cover the states of Tabasco and Campeche. The report goes on to say that SCT will have to wait for these weather conditions to subside and for water levels to lower once again before they can even check on the veracity of these reports, the state of the roads in question and the degree to which they were damaged, let alone coordinate and execute repair efforts. 

Photo by:   SCT

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