Hood River Bridge Reopened Following Malfunction: did what it "was supposed to do" in the case of a failure
"The bridge did what it was supposed to do in the case of a failure,”
Hood River, Ore., December 29, 203 – The Hood River Bridge across the Columbia River from Interstate 84 to SR 14 in Washington was closed at 5 a.m. this morning due to a malfunction during a lift test and then reopened at about 11:30 a.m.
The bridge has been undergoing tests every Friday morning since the installation of new wire cords which lift the bridge deck to allow river traffic to pass through.
“We have been performing maintenance lifts every Friday at 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. for the purpose of tensioning and testing the newly installed wire ropes,” said Kevin Greenwood, Executive Director of the Port of Hood River.
The test lifts are scheduled to take place every Friday through May of 2024.
Today’s test lift was the 25th of 60 test lifts ordered by engineers.
Engineers were able to remotely diagnose the issue with the bridge.
“There was an electrical decoder piece that malfunctioned. So we’ll actually be looking to get the piece replaced,” said Greenwood “We’ll be meeting again with our engineers later this afternoon to do a debrief and see what we need to do to keep this from happening in the future.”
Greenwood said that the malfunction, while inconvenient, is actually a good thing.
“During the test today the lift went up and then a safety mechanism basically caused the lift to freeze in place, which is actually what we want it to do, as opposed to coming down and getting torqued in a way that would cause more serious permanent damage,” said Greenwood. “The bridge did what it was supposed to in the case of a failure so that’s a positive. The fact that it froze is a good sign.”
Bridge replacement efforts are still underway.
Michael Shannon, Project Director for the Hood River and White Salmon Bridge Replacement Project said that
“It just reinforces that old infrastructure has an impact on the community. You’re dealing with aging components on something that’s a hundred years old. It’s like if you have a hundred year old car, you can replace things, but it’s still a hundred year old car. So the maintenance to keep this functional continues to increase,” said Shannon.
“Right now we need the community to be indicating to the officials that are making some of these grant decisions, that this replacement is needed. That’s the most important thing to us right now is that the community is stressing to our leaders at the state and national level that this is something that needs funding,” said Shannon.
