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Bridge Damage Under Review

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By MARK DOUGLAS

mdouglas@wfla.com

Published: March 16, 2009

BELLEAIR SHORE - Pinellas County public works engineers expect a preliminary report soon on why 2,700 pounds of concrete chunks rained down from the new Belleair Causeway Bridge during a construction mishap February 6.

Bridge workers were stretching one of the 22 "tendons" that hold concrete roadbed segments together like beads on a string, consulting engineer James Phillips III of ECDriver said at the time.

Phillips said a kink in the steel tendon imbedded in the concrete straightened and pushed out chunks of concrete beneath it.

The mishap left a shallow hole about 8 feet square in the bottom side of the bridge's eastern approach, exposing the steel tendon and other steel reinforcement used to strengthen the concrete structure.

"It does not impact the overall strength of the bridge so it still has the full ability to carry loads," Phillips said.

He said he doesn't think anything will stand in the way of opening the new span to traffic by the end of April.

"There's a tremendous amount of work to be done but right now the contractor says they're on schedule to get this bridge open," Phillips said.
Pinellas County holds the general contractor, Johnson Brothers Inc., responsible for repairing the problem and paying any associated costs. Pinellas County is building the $72 million bridge over Clearwater Harbor with federal money and "Penny for Pinellas" tax dollars.

The county hired the concrete consulting firm E & L Support Services Inc. to review the problem. E & L technicians discovered a number of microcracks in the bridge segment, each about as wide as the ballpoint on the end of a pen.

Bridge workers are using jackhammers to carve out a space twice as large as the hole left under the bridge so they can attach a patch.

"We're in a fairly corrosive saltwater environment and that concrete layer underneath is what protects the steel from rapidly corroding," Philips said. "So it's very important that we put it back and put it back so that it has real integrity to it as an integral part of the overall structure."

Before that happens, an outside engineering consultant, Bridge Concepts Inc., will have to complete an investigation of the tendon mishap and state engineers will have to approve the repair process. A preliminary version was expected as early as Friday.

News Channel 8 reporter Mark Douglas can be reached at (727) 536-9603.

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