Damaged road in Carcar lies on fault line

FAULT LINE IN CARCAR. Engineer Michelle Salvador (center) of the Department of Public Works and Highways Cebu 2nd District Engineering Office and Councilor Rey Anthony Lawas (extreme right) of Barangay Guadalupe, Carcar City inspect a section of a road damaged by recent heavy rains in Sitio Graje, Barangay Guadalupe, Carcar City Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. Salvador said the damaged road lies along a fault line. (Photo by Guam Logronño)
FAULT LINE IN CARCAR. Engineer Michelle Salvador (center) of the Department of Public Works and Highways Cebu 2nd District Engineering Office and Councilor Rey Anthony Lawas (extreme right) of Barangay Guadalupe, Carcar City inspect a section of a road damaged by recent heavy rains in Sitio Graje, Barangay Guadalupe, Carcar City Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. Salvador said the damaged road lies along a fault line. (Photo by Guam Logronño)

A PORTION of the road in Barangay Guadalupe, Carcar City in southern Cebu that sustained cracks due to several days of continuous rainfall last week lies along a fault line.

Barangay Guadalupe Councilor Rey Anthony Lawas told SunStar Cebu Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022 that they already requested the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to fix the damaged national road, which has been causing traffic among the motorists.

For the meantime, the barangay tanods and the police will man traffic in the area while the road has not been fixed yet.

Only one lane of the road can be used and vehicles going towards the south and to Cebu City take turns passing through it, as the other lane sustained cracks and is already starting to cave in.

Lawas said Guadalupe roads need strengthening. He said the frequent landslides caused by the constant rains had also destroyed the ripraps.

The barangay asked the city government to help them establish an alternate route to divert traffic in the area.

Lawas said the road in the barangay, particularly in Sitio Graje, had already caved in in 1976 and in the ‘80s, swallowing some houses.

Engineer Michelle Salvador of the DPWH Cebu 2nd Engineering District Office, who visited the area with fellow employees, told SunStar Cebu that the damaged road lies on a fault line.

“Temporary lang ni atong pagtambak kay nagkinahanglan pa ta sa feasibility study. Atong mapangitaag remedy aron dili magbalik-balik nga moliki og mohulpa ang karsada kay lagi naa sa fault line,” Salvador said.

(This road repair is only temporary as we still have to conduct a feasibility study to look for a remedy so that the road does not keep cracking and caving in again as it lies along the fault line).

She said the fault line in Sitio Graje traverses the towns of Dumanjug and Sibonga and the city of Toledo.

Salvador said one of their proposals is to construct a “bridge type” road so that motorists can still pass through the area even if the earth underneath moves.

The DPWH official said water underneath the area might have caused the soil to soften, resulting in road cracks.

It can be noticed that the edge of the road already caved in due to soil erosion.

A fault line is a “slip-up or cracks in a volume of rock due to rock-mass movement. A large fault within the Earth’s crust is the result of the movement of tectonic plates. A rapid movement of a fault line may produce powerful energy that can trigger a very strong earthquake,” according to the National Research Council of the Philippines.

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