Collapsed bridge fixers fined

SUDBURY, Ont. — Ask anybody who lives in this Northern Ontario community what he was doing the day the bridge on highway 17 collapsed and he’ll tell you.

But probably not as vividly as Dave Kozachenko.

He had just driven his pick-up truck under the structure and watched, in his rear view mirror, as it crashed down onto the road behind him.

“I’ve never come that close to getting killed,” Kozachenko told a local newspaper. “Someone up there must still want me around.”

The overpass had been closed for repairs to concrete deterioration on the 30-year-old-structure. But the metal beams jacking up the bridge’s mainframe gave way.

The bridge spanned one of the most important arteries in town — Lorne Street, linking the city with the main facilities of Vale Inco, the town’s largest employer. It’s a main thoroughfare. Hundreds of heavy-duty trucks go under the bridge daily.

According to local media reports this week a provincial court judge in Sudbury slapped the engineering firm repairing the structure with a $130,000 fine and one of its supervisors was told to pay $10 grand.

The company Nor Eng was convicted of five counts of failing to ensure that the bridge construction was undertaken safely, and supervisor Glenn Bot was convicted as well.

In addition to the fines, the court imposed a 25-percent victim fine surcharge on the total, as required by the Provincial Offences Act.