The Sunshine Bridge in Donaldsville, built in 1963, is one of eight bridges in Louisiana that the NTSB identified as being at an "unknown level of risk of collapse" if struck by a vessel.
Eight bridges in Louisiana are among 68 across the country that the National Transportation Safety Board identified as being at an “unknown level of risk of collapse” should it be hit by a vessel.
It’s part of a report that the NTSB released on the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
The NTSB asked the Department of Transportation to let it know of the probability of collapse should a vessel hit any one of them.\
Rodney Mallett with DOTD says there are warning systems in place.
“Sometimes they have these vessel monitoring tracking devices, so they know where the vessels are at all times,” says Mallett. “There’s also the emergency warning on our bridges.”
Mallett says DOTD will begin reviewing the bridges right away.
“With this new report coming out and the threshold getting more stringent, we’re certainly going to do more inspections and investigation, and in some cases there might be some additional work that we’re going to have to do,” says Mallett. “We have 30 days to reply to the report, and our bridge crews are poised to do exactly that.”
The bridges identified in the report, along with the year they were built, are:
- Huey P. Long Bridge, Jefferson Parish, 1936
- Crescent City Connection (original bridge), New Orleans, 1957
- Sunshine Bridge, Donaldsonville, 1963
- Israel LaFleur Bridge (I-210), Lake Charles, 1964
- Horace Wilkinson Bridge (I-10), Baton Rouge, 1968
- Hale Boggs Bridge, Luling, 1983
- Crescent City Connection (newer bridge), New Orleans, 1985
- Veterans Memorial Bridge, Gramercy, 1989
All eight bridges were built prior to the establishment of industry guidelines in 1991.
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