Crucial East Coast highway bridge closed
The Associated Press - By RANDALL CHASE - Associated Press
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Highway engineers say a crucial bridge on the Eastern Seaboard's interstate highway system could imperil drivers if traffic is allowed back on it.
The bridge, near Wilmington, Delaware, was closed Monday when its support pillars were found to be tilting. The Interstate 495 bridge won't reopen anytime soon, highway officials said Tuesday, and the 90,000 vehicles that cross it every day are being diverted onto the main north highway, I-95, further overloading one of the most crowded arteries in America.
Engineers say ground under the columns moved and caused the supports to tilt. Officials said they believe the mile-long bridge over the Christina River is not in any danger of collapsing under its own weight. But out of concern for public safety, they do not want to allow traffic back on it until they find out more about what caused the pillars to shift.
"We never said that it was ready to fail. We were concerned about the tilt because that was abnormal behavior for that structure," said Rob McCleary, chief engineer for the Delaware Department of Transportation.
In a worst-case scenario, such as a crash that forced traffic to back up and stall in both directions on the six-lane bridge, certain parts of it might not be able to handle the weight load within acceptable safety standards, officials said.
"If all the traffic was stopped and you were directing maximum stress and load on that bridge, you could get overload of certain members, ... that could potentially lead to failure," state Transportation Secretary Shailen Bhatt said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. "But you never want to overload."
Four pairs of 50-foot-tall columns that are 5 feet in diameter were leaning, with the top of one roughly two feet out of line with the bottom. They are tilting by as much as 2.4 degrees, or 4 percent, from vertical.
The whole bridge, built in 1974, needs to be inspected, officials say.
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