For the second time in two months, crews are scrambling to install an emergency eyebar repair on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The original fix made over Labor Day weekend consisted of a steel saddle brace wrapping around a broken beam of the steel truss. That brace snapped during the windy Oct. 27 evening commute, dropping a 5,000-lb crossbeam and steel connectors into traffic and closing the bridge down indefinitely.
As of Oct. 28, crews with North Highlands, Calif.-based MCM Construction Inc. were dealing with high wind gusts of up to 50 mph as they worked carefully to remove debris and put the new steel in place. “We are reducing the capacity of the equipment because of the wind and that is slowing us down,” says Ed Puchi, MCM Construction treasurer. Winds were expected to calm down on Thursday.