Guantánamo.- La Farola viaduct, among the seven wonders of Cuban civil engineering will be completely restored to repair the serious damage caused by Hurricane Oscar and the damage over the past 59 years of use.
The hydrometeorological phenomenon, plus the subsequent continuous rains and the necessary passage of heavy equipment to Baracoa, affected structures of the majestic road and caused numerous landslides and subsidence of the ground, which required the rapid intervention of builders from several provinces of the country to guarantee vehicular circulation.
Specialists from the Holguín Engineering and Design Services Company (Vértice) are working on the accurate diagnosis of these problems and others accumulated by the viaduct in order to plan the actions to be undertaken, some of which are complex due to the magnitude of the damage, the steepness of the terrain and the technical means required.
Carlos Martínez Turro, vice-governor, said that the repair of La Farola requires recovering, with the support of the country, some 40 trucks, bulldozers and other heavy equipment paralyzed mostly by tires, batteries and lubricants.
Another of the planned actions is the limitation of heavy load vehicles on that road. In fact, there will be heavy vehicles that will not be able to travel through La Farola and will have to travel via the Guantánamo-Sagua-Moa-Baracoa roads (this requires the rehabilitation of some sections, especially the Moa-Baracoa, which is being worked on), and the Cajobabo-La Máquina-Baracoa, with the current limitation of the Yumurí bridge, which needs to be restored.
It is estimated that the diagnosis in progress will not take more than a month to be completed and that while this happens, progress can be made on less complex tasks, for example, on the Cagüeybaje section, which has a project. The Provincial Roads Center will be the investor in the capital repairs.
In a recent meeting in which the subject was addressed, it was revealed that the La Farola Viaduct will be equipped again with a brigade for its maintenance.
The construction of the La Farola viaduct lasted only 20 months (from April 1964 to December 1965). Its majesty, quality and abundance of technical solutions are a permanent recognition for Cuban builders.
Around 96 percent of the people who enter or leave Baracoa and more than 83 percent of the merchandise pass through this road today, the original project of which was by engineer Maximiliano Isoba. These figures express, in themselves, the economic-social impact of this work, a promise and fraud of neocolonial misgovernments, made a reality by the Revolution.
