Crews Install Shields To Protect Oklahoma Bridges

Monday, January 8th 2007, 11:41 am

By: News On 6

MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) -- Construction crews have begun erecting shields around bridge supports in the Arkansas River, where 14 people died in 2002 after a barge slammed into a pier holding up a section of Interstate 40.

Columns are being installed to protect supports for bridges at Oklahoma 100, U.S. 62, I-40 and Oklahoma 51.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation approved a program a year ago to build the 12-foot-wide columns, which are anchored in bedrock and extend about 15 feet above the water surface. Work is to be finished this summer.

On May 26, 2002, a barge slammed into a pier supporting the I-40 bridge over the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, near Webbers Falls. A 503-foot section collapsed.

It cost $30 million to rebuild the bridge and set up detours, said Gary Ridley, director of ODOT.

"We consider the Webbers Falls incident to be the worst tragedy in the history of ODOT ...," Ridley said earlier.

Oklahoma will be the only state to build such a system of columns protecting bridges on inland waterways, although some states have built similar columns to protect bridges along ocean waterways, ODOT said.

ODOT in Muskogee County learned in July that it will receive almost $2 million the Cherokee Nation gave ODOT to repair pier protection cells on two bridges over the Arkansas River on U.S. 62 in the Three Forks Harbor area.