By Andrew de Souza

Top story of 2011, Girder failure, weight restrictions and eventual repair of Diefenbaker Bridge

Dec 31, 2011 | 7:11 AM

The Diefenbaker Bridge, its girder failure, weight restriction and eventual repair is our top story of 2011.

It started in August when a keen-eyed canoeist spotted a crack in the western-most girder of the bridge on a weekend. They informed the city and police and by Monday, the city made the emergency decision to close the southbound lanes that sat on top of the cracked girder.

“As soon as we saw the failure mechanism we knew we had to take the load off it,” said city manager Robert Cotterill. Before engineers could arrive, the city simply assumed the worst and put a load restriction of 15 tonnes on the bridge.

A failure of that size came as a surprise to many in City Hall as a bridge inspection had been conducted earlier in the summer. However, it was determined that the failure was the result of a newly-recognized and little-understood stress mechanism on the ailing span, and simply could not have been detected.

Now the delay caused a lot of headaches and the weight restriction hurt many businesses but there was no other alternative, said the city.

Agricultural Benefits Settlement

NOTICE OF RATIFICATION VOTE - Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation

35m ago

out of this world

LLRIB musician selected to have work sent to the moon

18h ago

Drugs, slingshot and prison walls

RCMP arrest three with slingshot, coke and meth outside of the Sask. Pen.

19h ago

The reality was that much of the expertise required to fix the bridge were from places other than Saskatchewan and it took several weeks to have everything in place.

After careful study, it was determined that the best course of action was to jack up the bridge to replace the broken section.

After about two weeks the repairs were completed and all lanes were open. The city had promised the bridge would be open before Christmas and to show off their work, the contractors adorned the bridge with a bow and a letter to the city.

But it the issue isn’t all wrapped up. The bridge itself is far from pristine condition. The failure that occurred can potentially happen at as many as about 80 other locations on the bridge and that is work that will have to begin in the New Year.

Not only that but the city won’t be lifting weight restrictions on the bridge until a mechanism can be put in place to monitor the underside for damage as those heavier loads go across.

The city says that won’t happen until January.

news@panow.com