Riley orders inspections of O'Neal

Gov. Bob Riley on Thursday ordered new inspections of O'Neal Bridge and two others in Alabama that are similar but not identical to the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota.

Riley ordered inspections of the O'Neal Bridge between Florence and Sheffield over the Tennessee River, the Alabama 14 bridge in Tallassee over the Tallapoosa River and the Alabama 22 bridge over the Coosa River in Chilton County, Riley spokeswoman Tara Hutchison said.

"They have long spans but not the same type of construction," Alabama Department of Transportation spokesman Tony Harris said.

"It has a steel truss up under the deck," state DOT Director Joe McInnes said. "The one in Minnesota is an arch truss and the one on the O'Neal Bridge is a latticework structure similar to the one in Tallassee and Chilton County."

O'Neal Bridge was built in 1939 but the ages of the others were not immediately known.

The bridge inspection at O'Neal will begin at 8:30 a.m. today and will take two to three days to complete, including inspectors working Saturday, DOT officials said.

O'Neal Bridge's last regularly scheduled inspection was in June 2006, according to the DOT. In August 2004, contractors applied a new surface to protect and preserve the bridge's roadway. There also was work done to the angle irons installed at the bridge joints.

One lane of the bridge will be closed during the inspection.

McInnes said inspectors began traveling to the Alabama bridges targeted for inspection Thursday, and he expects the inspections to be completed by next week.

He said the bridges will be inspected under and below water if there are any below-water structures.

McInnes said he offered to send some of Alabama's 90 certified bridge inspectors to his counterpart in Minnesota after the fatal collapse of the Interstate 35 west bridge.

"This is a very rare event, and this just doesn't happen very often," McInnes said. "We don't know the cause of that bridge collapse and we don't know the situation, and until we do, it's premature to speculate."

McInnes said state-owned bridges are safe.

"We feel every bridge in Alabama is safe, and there is no need for the traveling public to worry," McInnes said

Structure experts at the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham say it's possible for bridges to collapse because much of the nation's road infrastructure is old.

Bill Hitchcock, a professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at UAB, said bridge maintenance and timely funding of highway maintenance is important to public safety.

"Virtually every state in the nation would like to have more funding for bridge repair," he said.

Jim Richardson, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at the University of Alabama, teaches classes on structures and conducts research for the Alabama DOT on bridge maintenance.

Richardson said a major difference in the bridges in Alabama and Minnesota is that Alabama rarely has ice and snow that require salting of roadways on bridges.

"That's very corrosive to a steel bridge," Richardson said. He added that no one knows yet the cause of the Minnesota bridge collapse but steel is susceptible to corrosion and to cracks because of increased, heavy traffic.

The Minnesota bridge is 40 years old and was built just before new design and redundant safety features were required after a 1967 bridge collapse, Richardson said.

McInnes said counties and cities inspect their own bridges but some bridges in Alabama because of the high traffic count are inspected more often than the required every two years.

Alabama has nearly 15,827 bridges of which 5,687 are owned by the state, 8,746 are maintained by counties and 1,328 are maintained by cities.

Craig Stubblefield, chief of resource management for the Natchez Trace Parkway, said the nearly 500 bridges on the 444-mile parkway are inspected at least every two years by engineers with the Eastern Federal Lands Highway Division, a

part of the Federal Highway Administration.

A massive replacement program in Alabama began in 1999 to upgrade hundreds of bridges across the state.

Just under 250 bridges are deemed structurally deficient, which signifies that a bridge is eligible for replacement but is not unsafe, according to the DOT. Bridges deemed unsafe are either posted for weight or closed.

Structurally deficient bridges in the Shoals area are: the U.S. 72 bridge over Bluewater Creek in Lauderdale County; four bridges in Lawrence County over Mallard and Fox creeks on Alabama 20; and Alabama 247 over Rock Creek in southeast Colbert County.

Dana Beyerle can be reached at (334) 264-6605 or dtb123@aol.com.

TimesDaily Staff Writer Russ Corey contributed to this report.