ODOT Director Addresses Stability of Oklahoma Bridges Following Maryland Bridge Collapse

The Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore raises questions about the stability of the bridges in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Department of Transportation addressed the concerns during its commission meeting on Monday. 

ODOT Director Tim Gatz says Oklahoma has a history of bad bridges but over the past 20 years, that has changed. He said the barge colliding with a bridge in Sallisaw over the weekend is proof of that.

“Structurally that bridge performed as expected,” said Gatz.

The barge slammed into the US-59 bridge at the Kerr Reservoir on Saturday. The barge and tug separated, but the bridge is still standing. Gatz says that bridge was designed to withstand the impact.

“The repair was superficial, so the damage was superficial,” Gatz said.

Bridge Engineer Justin Hernandez says the modern design on 22-year-old bridge is still significant today with three columns instead of two.

“The portions of the pier this bridge is founded on are 12 feet in diameter they've got two cages of reinforcing throughout, and they’re encased in steel jackets,” Hernandez said. “Worst case scenario, if one of those columns was removed from service, we could shift traffic over to the structurally sound part of the bridge and at least carry one lane of traffic while further repairs were made.”

Hernandez said the agency plans to reinforce other bridges that span over water, around 18 of them.

“They'll all have resistant pier designs, we're not going to remove any pier protection we're going to leave that in place,” Hernandez said.

Gatz said there are 6,800 total bridges in the state. He said bridge infrastructure is in far better condition than it was back in 2002, when the I-40 bridge collapsed near Webbers Falls.

“We've got eyes on our bridges all the time,” Gatz said. “We've invested significantly in our bridge infrastructure where we had more than a thousand structurally deficient bridges at that moment in time, today we're going to have less than 50.”

Gatz says staying at less than one percent is the goal.

“If you do the math on that, 6,800 bridges, we always want to be below 68 in the structurally deficient category,” Gatz said. “That's going to put us solid top ten in the country.”

ODOT says it plans to improve the 50 remaining deficient bridges as part of the agency's 8-year construction plan.