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The Otago Regional Council is hoping its construction site at the Dundas St bridge will remain...
The Otago Regional Council is hoping its construction site at the Dundas St bridge will remain safe. PHOTO: STEPHEN JAQUIERY
The Otago Regional Council is working with police and other authorities to "maintain the safety'' of its Dundas St construction site after more than 1000 have signalled they will "storm'' it.

As of yesterday, 1200 people had clicked "attending'' on a social media event page called "storm the dundas bridge, they can't stop us all'' and another 3900 signalled they were interested.

The event is set for 5pm on Saturday, August 10.

The page description expresses frustration at the continued closure of parts of Dundas St because of flood works by the council.

"On the second saturday of August, we band together to bring down the great Dundas walls of oppression ... If the bridge will not finish in time, we will make it open in time,'' the message reads.

The page is a reference to the social media event "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" which has a short and vague description including the line "Let's see them aliens".

It had 1.8 million people attending as of yesterday and spawned many jokes and similar pages. 

Operations general manager Gavin Palmer said the council appreciated the humour of the event and understood it stemmed from frustration about the bridge being closed.

"However, we cannot stress enough how unsafe it would be for people to unlawfully access the worksite.

"There are currently gaps in the bridge that drop a number of metres on to concrete and rocks. A fall from the bridge could well be fatal.''

The council would work with the University of Otago, Otago Polytechnic, police and security contractors to "maintain the safety of the site during the event''.

"We acknowledge the inconvenience the bridge's closure has caused, especially to students living in the area,'' he said.

The work, originally due to be completed next month, was extended until October because of unforeseen additional works.

However, the council would seek to open the bridge for pedestrians earlier if possible.

One of the administrators of the event, who did not want to be named, said the page "blew up really fast''.

"Thought we'd jump on the wagon. Within an hour, I think we got about 1000 people interested.''

There was a trend of the bridge closure being the centre of jokes online, he said. He hoped people would not actually show up.

"There might be a few people, but I doubt anything will actually happen.''

jono.edwards@odt.co.nz

 

Comments

""There are currently gaps in the bridge that drop a number of metres on to concrete and rocks. A fall from the bridge could well be fatal.''.
Easy solution ..... Have an open day, attach boards etc to the holes and let people have a look at what has been going on and why there are delays.
Effectively banning and bringing in police isn't helping anyone, people quite rightly want to know what is going on.

Or we could set up a kiosk and plank ... then charge those rebelious scarfies $20 a head to "walk the plank" ... hopefully there will be adequate participants to cover the cost of riot police, ambo's and disposal of the 1,000 or so bodies expected to attend ...

It really does just show the quality of education students are receiving these days, in my day, we (the students) would have designed and built a Trebuchet; charged a bob per head to get students across the gap and had a bloody great time at the Cook recalling the one student who landed a little off target and damaged the proctors penny farthing ...

Ah ... those were the days ...

 

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