This gets more and more interesting, and like Katrina, the public is learning a lot more about the actual level of safety that has been provided by public leadership.
10 bridges on repair list
Interstate 5 over Sacramento River shows cracks
By Tony Bizjak - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, August 10, 2007
Ten aging bridges in the Sacramento region have been placed on a new state high-priority list for repair or replacement -- including busy Interstate 5 over the Sacramento River near Sacramento International Airport.
The bridge's steel understructure is cracking, inspections show.
The cracks, first noted in 1982, are in support plates, not in the bridge's main girders, engineers cautioned, but the cracks are growing.
"It is not alarming, but we've gotten to a point where it is time to do something," said engineer Barton Newton of the state Department of Transportation. "We want to make sure those cracks don't grow into the girder itself."
Repairs are set for next year, he said.
The status of the bridge, known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge, and hundreds of other California spans was highlighted in bridge maintenance data released Thursday by Caltrans officials.
Officials said they were making the data available in an effort to clear up confusion over safety concerns about California bridges after last week's catastrophic collapse of a freeway bridge into the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis.
The collapse was followed by the revelation that 3,000 bridges in California and many more nationally are categorized by the federal government as "structurally deficient."
State highway officials repeatedly emphasized that none of the bridges on the state's high-priority list or on the federal "structurally deficient" list is at risk of collapse.
"Our bridges are safe," Caltrans Director Will Kempton said, a statement he repeated twice more in a matter of minutes during a press conference Thursday. "If they were not, we would take action to remedy the matter."
Nevertheless, Caltrans officials said they were digging through files to determine which of the state's 23,000 bridges are secured with steel gusset plates after federal officials said faulty gusset plates may have caused the Minneapolis collapse.
