No Hope in Sight for Reopening Bay Bridge After Metal Snaps

SAN FRANCISCO – The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, closed after 5,000 pounds of metal broke off during rush hour earlier this week, won't reopen to traffic in time for Thursday morning's commute, a California Department of Transportation spokesman said Wednesday.

The bridge, one of the region's major transportation arteries, has been out of commission since Tuesday evening, when metal rods and a cable fell into traffic, leaving one motorist with minor injuries.

The accident resurrected fears about the safety of a span that millions watching the 1989 World Series broadcast saw had failed during a major earthquake.

Tuesday's terrifying scene stirred anger over the constant delays and soaring costs of the still-unfinished new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which has become the largest public works project in California history.

"I thought I was going into the Bay," said Andrea Nelson, a marketing consultant and personal coach who saw the crossbar and two rods fall and bounce on the road ahead of her as she headed into San Francisco for dinner. She swerved and her car spun out as she ran over the rods, which gashed her tires.

"I have lost so much confidence in the experts, the millions of dollars that are being spent to reconstruct and build a new bridge," she said. "I just find it shocking and unacceptable."

Construction crews worked through Tuesday night fighting winds that gusted to 35 mph as they brought in heavy machinery to try to move the metal and make repairs. On Wednesday, the strong winds continued to hamper efforts to repair the bridge that carries about 280,000 cars each day.

Ney told reporters Wednesday evening he didn't know when traffic would again be allowed on the bridge.

The catalyst for a replacement span was the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which caused a 50-foot section of the bridge's upper deck to collapse onto the deck below, causing another section to give way. It took state officials until 1997 to decide it would be cheaper over the long run to build a new span than retrofit the existing one.

The cost initially put forth for replacing the bridge was $1.3 billion with a 2004 completion; that has grown to $7.2 billion with a 2013 opening. Meantime, the existing eastern span was outfitted with giant shock absorbers and other fortifications meant to help it withstand a quake.

The pieces that failed were parts of major repairs done last month after state inspectors discovered a crack in an "eyebar," an important structural beam. The rods that broke were holding a saddle-like cap that had been installed to strengthen the cracked eyebar.

Caltrans engineers were trying to figure out why the recent repairs — which were supposed to last until the new bridge opened in 2013 — failed in less than two months.

Ney said earlier Wednesday the strong winds likely played a role in the failure, which heightened concerns by some experts about the integrity of the repair and the bridge's safety in an earthquake. Scientists in 2008 said there is a 63 percent probability of a quake similar to the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta temblor in the Bay area over the next 30 years.

Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a civil engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley who studied the effects of the 1989 earthquake on the bridge, called the repair last month a "Band-Aid" that jeopardized public safety to get the bridge open quickly.

"When this eyebar fractured, this is very serious element of this part of the bridge. So the safety issue is very serious here," he said. "The repair done, in my opinion, is very unusual to put it mildly."

The main contractor on the repairs, C.C. Meyers, Inc., stood by the work, but deferred to Caltrans to determine why the pieces failed, spokeswoman Beth Ruyak said.

Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Administration sent engineers on Wednesday to help Caltrans investigate. The federal agency said it had not inspected the Labor Day weekend repairs made to the heavily used span, instead relying on state inspection reports to ensure safety guidelines were met.

Traffic remained jammed Wednesday evening on other San Francisco-area highways, as commuters looked for alternatives to the bridge.