Engineers Tackle Repairs On Mysteriously Shifted Span
Repairs to a Louisiana-Mississippi bridge that shifted 6 in. are under way almost three years after the problem was diagnosed, but the exact cause of the shift is still unknown.
The problem was discovered in May 2001 when the New Orleans-based office of Modjeski and Masters was routinely surveying the Interstate 20 bridge over the Mississippi River between Vicksburg, Miss., and Delta, La., says Gil Gautreau, bridge maintenance engineer for the Louisiana Dept. of Transportation and Development. The 31-year-old, 13,358-ft-long truss bridge has a series of simple and cantilever spans and a suspended span.