Incident Report

Subject:            FW: Don't sweat the small stuff like bridge clearances            

Date of Email reporting Incident:   Mon 21/01/2002 12:15

Report Detail:

I-44 bridge at Lebanon to be rebuilt. Girders supporting the overpass were destroyed after tanker hit it Sunday.

LEBANON — Girders supporting an overpass on Interstate 44 were so mangled by a 30-ton steel tank Sunday night the overpass will have to be demolished, said a Missouri Department of Transportation bridge engineer.

The result is that traffic on the interstate will have to detour for several weeks around the overpass carrying Business Route 44 and Route MM over the interstate. The force of impact by the 32-foot-long, 13-foot-tall, high-pressure tank — being hauled on a trailer — was so intense, it bent four 3-foot beams up to eight feet, engineer Dave O’Connor said. Although the damage was over the eastbound lanes, the collision’s effect on the beams might have extended over the westbound lanes, he said. The remote possibility of a collapse prompted the decision not to try to open the west-bound lanes, he said.

Although MoDOT will move quickly to demolish the overpass, the process could take at least one month, spokesman Bob Edwards said. A new overpass will cost $2-3 million. MoDOT is contacting the Enid, Okla., trucking company hired to haul the tank so it can contact its insurance company to pay for the damage, Edwards said.

Truck driver Jacob Hall, 45, of Enid was not injured, but was cited for violating a MoDOT special permit that required him to follow a route avoiding overpasses. No one in the bridge repair crew — which spent Monday cutting away parts of girders so the tank could be pulled away — had seen that kind of damage before, O’Connor said. Unlike truck trailers that shred apart if they hit girders, the tank was too tough, he said. “This guy is three-quarter-inch steel,” he said. “He’s hell for stout.”

It was the second collision involving a truck and bridge on I-44 in just over one year. In April 2000, a trucker died when his rig hit piers supporting an overpass near St. Robert. Work to rebuild the damaged pier took several weeks. While watching the effort to pull the tank away, paramedic Lee Sawyer said he knew something strange happened when he heard the crash from his nearby home. “It wasn’t a crash, it was a grinding, moaning sound like bending metal,” he said.