Cracks on road blamed on hotel construction

CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu City government has ordered a stop to the construction works for a proposed hotel in Barangay Capitol Site after it allegedly damaged portions of nearby roads.

Architect Florante Catalan, head of the city’s Office of the Building Official, issued a cease and desist order to the proposed 13-storey hotel with commercial facilities until it can rectify its safety issues.

The contractor for the project is Phil Macro Development while Amber Corp. is reportedly the developer.

“We discovered cracks along Don Gil Garcia Street and a few on J. Llorente Street. There is an incident report from Phil Macro Development Corporation that showed the cracks as early as early morning of July 22,” Catalan told The FREEMAN.

A concerned citizen complained to OBO the alleged collapse of parts of Don Gil Garcia Street and J. Llorente Street reportedly due to the ongoing construction of the hotel and commercial building with roof deck and basement. The structure is reportedly owned by a certain James So.

OBO served the first notice to the company yesterday.

During the inspection, Catalan said, OBO found out there were several cracks on Don Gil Garcia Street and on J. Llorente Street near where the building is being constructed.

According to OBO, the ongoing construction has an approved building permit issued on June 19 and an approved excavation permit issued on May 10.

Based on the incident report of Phil Macro Development Corp., the cracks were estimated to be 5mm thick and 15m long. They began to appear around 7:45 a.m. of July 22.

To mitigate the situation, the company decided to backfill the area and cordon one lane of the road to avoid vibrations from vehicular traffic.

“Moreover, their workplace condition has a clayey soil, heavy rains, and water leakage from neighbors and existing drainage,” the firm said.

The PDMC report recommended soil nailing or soil protection 13 meters deep from six to nine meters deep and diversion of the drainage culvert on Don Gil Garcia and J. Llorente Streets since the cracks may have been due to the saturation of soil aside from other possible causes.

OBO recommended Amber Corporation/PDMC to submit a detailed incident report on the cracks, a detailed plan to rectify or strengthen the area from any possible damages, and stop all construction works until the completion of the rectification on the area for safety concerns.

This is the second incident involving excavation works damaging properties located near the projects.

The first incident involved the collapse of a portion of the Juanita Building on Gorordo Avenue corner N. Escario Street after the ground reportedly weakened and softened due to the alleged failure of to comply with the adequate soil protection by contractor of an ongoing 26-storey condominium project beside the Juanita Building on August 5.

As of now, the contractors of the building are implementing measures to mitigate further damage of the properties near the building. —  JMD (FREEMAN)