OAHU, Hawaii — A cement spill rained onto Timothy Castillo’s new car as he was driving under the H-1 overpass on Kamehameha Highway in Pearl City, Hawaii, according to an article on khon2.com.
The concrete hardened on his car’s surface, and Castillo blames the rail construction, the article said.
“I thought it was rain at first. Then I checked my arm, it was grayish. I tried to wipe my arm and it just smeared all over my arm,” Castillo explained.
KHON2 investigated the scene and did find a dried cement spill on the highway, the article explained.
According to the article, Castillo said that not only was his car only two months old and a gift from his wife, but that it’s also difficult to find a detailer on the island to repair the damage.
Benjamin Tongson, owner of Hawaii Auto Detail, said that he’s fixed three cars with concrete “all over the car, splattered all on the tops mainly. It was pretty bad. You would be mad if it happened to you kind of thing, you know? I can understand why the customers were coming in pissed off.”
Tongson claims that cement spill repairs on vehicles are a rare occurrence on the island, the article noted.
“It should not have happened,” he said. “With the construction going on, I can understand a few accidents happening here and there, nothing is ever perfect. But at the same time, things like this should be addressed and taken care of, and there should be proper procedures in place to prevent things like this from happening.”
Bill Brennan, spokesman for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) replied to questions about the incident. “I’m not sure of the night it happened, but what I do know is one night last week, while crews were up doing some finishing work on that balanced cantilever part of the freeway over by Sears Distribution Center over the H-1 Freeway, they were applying some grout, a fluid concrete mix that helps connect the precast segments. Some of that grout spilled over the balanced cantilever and down onto the ground below,” he responded. “We’re still investigating as to why and how that happened,” he said. “We know it did happen. We want to be open to people who may have been impacted, to feel free to call HART and file a claim.”
When asked what precautions could be taken to prevent this from happening again, Brennan replied, “Usually what we do is we put something underneath the area we’re working in case something falls or spills, it’s caught. I think we would look into doing that in the future,” Brennan said. “Because we’re finishing the work there, there wasn’t anything underneath this time.”
HART says that a similar spilling incident also occurred during construction work on the other balanced cantilever near the H-1, H-2 merge, the article stated.
Read the article here.
