Page 12 - Center Span News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Drivers are told to expect delays on the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge as traffic is currently stopped.

>> this bridge carries the weight of history on its arches. >> to this historian the arlington memorial bridge is a bridge that connects us as a country. >> on the washington side you have the lincoln memorial. on the virginia side you have the house where robert e. lee lived. this is the bridge that binds north and south together. unfortunately it's a binding that's coming apart as the bridge's interior posts are rusting away. and the concrete and the nine arch spans has been deteriorating for decades according to the federal highway administration. >> the center span right where we're walkin...

Pieces. >> very early in the process, in fact before construction began, the lead engineer was very concerned about the bridge, so he began to help initiate studies by the professor at the university of washington that began to closely examine the bridge's movements. >> remedies are attempted before and after the bridge opens. >> they added cable tie downs at each end of the bridge on the approach spans. they did a good job of holding the approach spans in place. but the rest of the bridge across the center span still moved a lot. >> professor farquharson also issues an in-depth bridge studies...

It literally shook it self to pieces. >> very early in the process, in fact before construction began, the lead engineer was very concerned about the bridge, so he began to help initiate studies by the professor at the university of washington that began to closely examine the bridge's movement. >> remedies are attempted before and after the bridge opens. >> they added cable tie downs at each end of the bridge on the approach spans. they did a good job of holding the approach spans in place. but the rest of the bridge across the center span still moved a lot. >> professor farquharson also issu...

A clue to the cause of the scrapes was found on the bridge's center span. >> when we pulled the girder out of the water, we did a visual inspection, and we noticed that some of the vertical steel members called stiffeners that were on the side of the girder had been bent flat against the girder. >> investigators measured the distance between the stiffeners and compared them to the vertical marks on the barge. they were a perfect match. now they had solid evidence to prove what caused the fatal crash of the sunset limited.