As a nation was held spellbound by the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota in mid-summer, attention soon was riveted on the durability of spans in West Virginia.
Twenty of them are similar in construction to the one that crumbled Aug. 1 along Interstate 35W overlooking the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, including a pair along the West Virginia Turnpike near Princeton over the Bluestone River. One by one, the 20 spans were examined and all passed muster, Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox said.
“We have a bridge inspection program that is among the best in the country,” he said.
When a bridge is found to have deficiencies, the term is actually a broad one and shouldn’t be misconstrued to mean that it poses an imminent danger to the motoring public, Mattox emphasized. “That doesn’t mean that a bridge is ready to fall down by any means,” he said.
“Deficiency can be a very negative word. Damage can range from very minimal to severe.”
Mattox’s agency is responsible for 6,343 bridges, of which 32 percent extend more than 100 feet long, along with 34,610 miles of state highway.
States are under a federal mandate to inspect at a minimum all of their bridges every two years — a task that was inspired by the Silver Bridge collapse in West Virginia on Dec. 15, 1967, plunging 46 people to their deaths. The tragedy formed the backdrop of a film titled “The Mothman Prophecies” about a legendary phantom that supposedly haunted the Ohio Valley in the Point Pleasant area for months leading up to the bridge’s failure.
“All of our bridges have been inspected and all of them are in good shape,” Mattox said.
Congress moved within a few years of the Silver Bridge tragedy to require biennial inspections, the secretary noted. “Once we have determined there are specific problems, we will inspect them in even shorter durations,” Mattox said.
Some bridges have been standing for generations, such as the Wheeling Suspension Bridge, erected around 1848.
“We’ve got a few bridges over 100 years old,” he said. “The Market Street Bridge over the Ohio River south of Weirton was built around 100 years ago. We do have some bridges in this state that are pretty old. Every few years, we go in and do renovation work on them, just as you would your house or car, or anything else.”
Mattox was unfamiliar with the service offered by Matcor, a Doylestown, Pa., firm that bills itself as the leader in cathodic protection, specializing in reversing corrosion prompted by de-icing during wintry travel, but said the DOT is open to looking at all new products and services through its materials division.
“Generally, they will come to our materials division and show their concept or product,” he said. “They then will evaluate it and determine if it’s cost effective or something we could use. Generally, we’ll have a pilot project or two to make sure it does what they say it will do.”