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We discussed the dire condition of those bridges with the engineer:

Evondale Moody, MIDH Chief Engineer
"When you look at the Belcan and the Belize City swing bridge, there are two different structures and as you mentioned, they are exposed to the element, especially the salt air. And for the Belize City swing bridge itself, that has been reduced in terms of its structural capacity because of the corroding of the steel structure that is there."

"So basically, that is just one massive steel structure resting on two abutments and a turntable. And so that structure itself, because of the salt air, has eroded over time. And this definitely needs to be changed."

"When you look at the Belcan bridge now, it's a slightly different structure because that is basically a girder bridge whereby you have a turntable in the middle and you also have two intermediate piers."

"Now, what has happened with Belcan is that the piers itself are the ones that are collapsing. And so, yes, it's critical for the Ministry to replace that bridge much more than the works that we're doing on the Hawksworth because of its structural integrity."

"And so we wouldn't want anything to collide as what has happened in Baltimore into those piers because they are already fractured. I mean, you could see it from the inspections that the Ministry did last year and we don't want to put the structure at risk."

"We know that we don't have any big heavy vessels traversing that area, but definitely it is our opinion that we need to replace the Belcan bridge as soon as we can."

The government of Japan has already approved funds for the swing bridge, while the MIDH is awaiting approval from the Ministry of Finance to proceed with replacing the Belcan.