President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. inspected on Thursday the collapsed Cabagan-Sta. Maria bridge in Isabela province. He was accompanied by Public Works and Highways Secretary Manuel Bonoan and other government officials.

In an interview, Marcos said the bridge collapsed due to a design flaw.

“The bottom line is its design flaw. The design is wrong. The history of this project, its funding was supposed to be, the project cost was P1.8 billion, so it was reduced to under P1 billion to make it cheaper. It was fixed, the detailed design was made [but] the design was really weak,” he said.

Marcos said the bridge was not properly supported by the arch and attached cables.

“If cables were used, it shouldn’t give out. Then the anchoring of the support, It should be at the top, all the way up for, all the way up for the entire arch. This is what supports it. That’s the steel you see and then the cement, that’s the only thing that supports the entire bridge,” he said, pointing to the collapsed bridge.

Marcos said the original budget for the bridge was P900 million which ballooned to P1.2 billion due to a retrofitting.

He said the construction was done “by the book,” however, the specifications were wrong.

He pointed out the weight capacity of the bridge was 44 tons of acceptable load while the truck that passed over it weighed over 100 tons.

Marcos vowed the government will find out who was responsible for the collapse but will prioritize the repair of the bridge.

“I always have a saying, fix the problem not the blame. Let’s fix the problem first. Believe me, we will find out who was responsible,” he said. “Who is responsible is basically who made the design because their design was poor. Look what happened. And then also, those trucks should never have been on the bridge.”

Marcos said that the government has no choice but to rebuild the bridge.

“Now, we’re going back again. We’re going to spend a lot again. We’re going to replace the supports. It’s like we’ll build a new bridge again,” he said.

Public Works Secretary Bonoan said the agency will look into what happened and if other segments of the bridge were compromised.

“One segment of the bridge, 60 meters, collapsed,” he said.