A flyover at the Marsa junction has been stripped off its oil-drenched asphalt and relaid over the weekend in an operation that could run into tens of thousands of euros.
The emergency road works had to be undertaken after a truck carrying a large amount of cooking oil spilt some 200 litres as it drove on the flyover on Friday morning. Both the flyover connecting Triq Garibaldi in Luqa to Aldo Moro Road in Marsa and a road lying beneath it were affected.
Infrastructure Malta is planning on recovering the costs from the person responsible for the damage.
Emergency roadworks started on Friday night. Photo: IMContractors were on Friday deployed to the site to begin a clean-up operation led by the Civil Protection Department, The truck driver responsible for the spill also helped in the clean-up operation.
However, this was not enough to ensure the road was safe so road contractors were brought in to remove the layer of damaged asphalt and relay a fresh one.
Infrastructure Malta CEO Ivan Falzon told Times of Malta when contacted on Monday that the emergency roadworks were carried out over the weekend and the entire stretch was reopened to traffic on Sunday.
Around 300m of the impacted road had to be resurfaced, Falzon said.
“Our priority was to undertake road surface works and related ancillaries like road markings to reopen this critical link, something we did early Sunday,” he said.
Emergency roadworks were undertaken over the weekend. Photo: IMFalzon said it was too early to quantify the cost of the damage since a number of tests and inspections on the impacted sites were still not concluded. However, he said, it would run into "tens of thousands for sure".
Asked whether Infrastructure Malta was planning on suing the truck driver and/or the company involved to cover the costs, Falzon suggested this was the plan.
“Like we do in all instances where damage to infrastructure maintained by IM is brought to our attention, we seek damages from the perpetrators if/when these are identified by the authorities,” he said.