When news broke of the Florida Bridge disaster, it captured the attention of Dr. Nabil Grace, Dean of the College of Engineering at Lawrence Technical University.
The Florida Department of Transportation recently brought him to Florida to share unrelated research done at LTU.
While there, officials casually told him how they were making history in numerous ways with the building of a new bridge at Florida International University. The massive structure was being built parallel to the road.
“It was literally the first time in the U.S. where they built a bridge next to the highway,” said Dr. Grace.
The bridge also was being built with a mix of innovative concrete.
“The concrete mix was new, not only in the United States, but all over the world,” said Dr. Grace.
Dr. Grace says because it featured so much innovation, finding out what went wrong could be challenging.
Ron Hall Sr.
“In all the bridges I am involved in, I always like to say, let’s only have one new parameter,” he said.
But one thing is clear, there is no bridge like the bridge in Florida in Michigan. None the less- that doesn’t mean we don’t have a reason to be concerned about bridge safety.
7 Action News reviewed records of our state’s bridges. Less than a year ago a state report painted a picture of the problems with some of Michigan’s bridges.
It found that 228 of the state’s highway bridges were at the time quote, “structurally deficient”. Some have had significant work done, others have not. Many of them were in metro Detroit. Fifty-eight were in Wayne County alone.
MDOT says right now inspections are done at least once every 24 months on state bridges, more often on those found to have structural issues.
MDOT’s head of bridges says while there are issues that need to be fixed on our roads and bridges, if a bridge is unsafe, it will be shut down.
“If they feel something is not safe, we don’t take any chances. We will close it. We know it is a pretty big impact to the public to have to do that, but safety is always paramount,” said Matt Chenoweth, MDOT Head of Bridges.
Chenoweth says it appears a construction issue lead to the collapse in Florida. He says stringent inspection processes are in place in Michigan to prevent such a disaster.
When it comes to making sure the bridges are maintained before they become structurally deficient, Dr. Grace says one thing is clear.
“Do we have a solution? Yes we do. We need more inspections. We need more funding to make our roads and bridges safe,” said Grace.
Because the Florida bridge collapsed during construction, it becomes an issue with the actual construction aspect of the bridge, not a structural deficiency and a bridge failing problem.
