Bridge name to honour Pasha Bulker storm victims

TWO years since a road collapse during the Pasha Bulker storms killed his daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren, a grieving Jim Bragg is bracing for the official opening of the bridge where his family died."We'll be there," he said."They told us it will be in three or four weeks."They're naming it after the family. I've got the plans for it in my hand now. They're naming it the Bragg-Holt Bridge."It's something. It's certainly better than nothing, but it doesn't bring them back."Roslyn Bragg, 29, of Chittaway Bay, her partner Adam Holt, 30, their daughters Madison, 3, and Jasmine, 2, and Ms Bragg's nephew, Travis, 9, died when the car Mr Holt was driving plunged into a chasm left when a section of the Pacific Highway at Somersby collapsed on June 8, 2007.A coroner last year found Gosford City Council "could and should have foreseen" that rusted culverts at the Piles Creek crossing beneath the highway would collapse if the creek was swollen in the kind of storm conditions that occurred that day.Roslyn Bragg's parents Jim and Helen, and Adam Holt's parents Ken and Gaye, have had to live with the coroner's finding that the five deaths were an "unnecessary tragedy" that should have been prevented.It's why they have made the trip to the crash site many times since that day."It draws us like a magnet," Mr Bragg said. "You've got to go somewhere with this grief, so we go there."The $2 million bridge across Piles Creek is "huge. Talk about overkill", said Mr Bragg.He doesn't attempt to hide the anger and bitterness he feels towards the council, the Roads and Traffic Authority and the Department of Local Government."Look at the council," he said. "Five people died, but they're all still working there."His anger deepened last month when the office of Local Government Minister Barbara Perry sent the Bragg family the findings of a department investigation into how the council failed to monitor the culverts. The report arrived with 32 blank pages."That's what cost five people their lives . . . sloppy paperwork," Mr Bragg said. "It was a total insult."Ms Perry's office apologised for the error but with no explanation, he said.On June 8 there will be a family gathering, as there was last year.And at the bridge opening in about a month, attended by dignitaries and politicians, the two families will listen to the speeches and remember five people who should not have died.