BROADGATE, St Mary – Classes for the 105 students of Mahoe Hill All-Age School in St Mary have been disrupted by the collapse on Sunday of the Broadgate/Mahoe Hill swing bridge, the only route to their school.

However, principal Beatrice Brown said plans were being made to assist the 18 students who are scheduled to sit the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) next month.

“We will be going to the Heart Training Centre on Wednesday where we will alternate with the trainees. The students will get the necessary classes,” Brown told the Observer yesterday.

Residents of the area say they were crossing the bridge after a game of Sunday evening football when it became loose and plunged about 40 feet into the Wag Water River. Fourteen persons who were crossing the bridge at the time received varying degrees of injuries, while two women, one of them pregnant, are now in hospital being treated for serious injuries.

The other woman was knocked out by the impact of the fall and was still unconscious early yesterday afternoon.

Triston Burkett, who received injuries to his left foot from the fall, recounted the experience.

“We just done play football about 6:30 in the evening and a come cross the bridge when we just feel the bridge a go. Some man run and get weh before it fall, but we couldn’t escape. Mi see mi whole life in front of me from when mi a likkle boy a play marble until now,” a still terrified Burkett told the Observer.

The mishap has left four families, including nine children, who live in the hillside community of Mahoe Hill, marooned.

Mayor of Port Maria, Bobby Montague, yesterday blamed the collapse of the bridge on poor maintenance and released a letter he said he sent to Transport Minister Bobby Pickersgill in October last year, citing the deterioration of the Broadgate/Mahoe Hill and Retreat swing bridges in the parish.

“The Broadgate/Mahoe Hill [bridge] has many missing cross members, the tension cables are frayed and loose and the abutment is breaking away,” Montague wrote.