Provincial employee checked overpass pre-collapse

Commission president Pierre-Marc Johnson listens to proceedings during the inquiry into the collapse of a highway overpass that killed five people last fall in Laval, Que. (CP / Paul Chiasson)

A Transport Quebec employee testifying at the public inquiry into the collapse of the highway overpass in Laval, said that he was not overly alarmed by the chunks of concrete he found on the scene.

Jules Bonin arrived at the scene about 45 minutes before the Concorde overpass collapsed on September 30, 2006, killing five people.

Bonin testified that he saw several chunks of concrete off Highway 19, just south of overpass and that he shoveled up about 20 smaller chunks of concrete, the size of golf balls.

"I didn't consider it extremely urgent," Bonin said when he was asked why he didn't close Highway 19 north of Montreal. "I never thought it was going to fall.''

Bonin put a piece of concrete in his truck and wrote a report indicating that an evaluation of the bridge needed to be completed quickly.

However, Bonin, who is not an engineer, indicated that it was not his responsibility to conduct a full inspection on the overpass.

His report, written on the Saturday afternoon that the bridge collapsed, marked the situation at the overpass as a priority, but it would not have been seen by any engineers before Monday.

Bonin told the inquiry that while over the past 10 years he has performed surveillance work on an intermittent basis for Transport Quebec, his main job duties involved clearing roads of debris.

The Transport Quebec employee had been called to the scene of the Concorde overpass because motorists had complained of seeing chunks of concrete falling from the structure.

Bonin's testimony comes on the second day of the public inquiry into the collapse of the de la Concorde overpass.

The public inquiry began with a minute of silence for the victims and proceeded with the eyewitness testimony of motorists, ambulance workers, police officers and technical experts who arrived on the scene.

The commission, headed by former premier Pierre Marc Johnson, will explore everything from the original engineering of the structure nearly four decades ago and the quality of the construction materials, to environmental factors and maintenance.

A final report for the public inquiry is due Oct. 15.

With a report from CTV's Annie DeMelt and files from The Canadian Press