State Police on I-210 January 15, 2024. Courtesy of State Police Facebook.
There are numerous road closures in the Bayou State after an arctic cold front swept across the country Monday creating hazardous conditions. DOTD spokesperson Rodney Mallett said even though crews began applying brine and salt to roadways Monday afternoon.
“When you have this much precipitation and the temperature gets that low, the elevated highways are going to ice over. At that point it becomes unsafe and unfortunately, we have to close those overpasses to protect our drivers,” said Mallett.
Because elevated roads and bridges ice over first, Mallett said DOTD crews in conjunction with State Police worked throughout the day Monday and overnight.
“We’ve been having to move people off of the elevated highways to the US-Highways, like I-55 down by LaPlace we have people taking US-51,” said Mallett.
One of the major roadways shutdown was the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge. Because it’s elevated for 18 miles, Mallett said it presents a huge challenge. He says they pretreat bridges on priority routes in Louisiana and they try to keep the Interstates open as long as possible…
“We know the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge would take way too much salt and manpower to keep open when we can take that traffic and put it on US-190 and instead of an 18-mile bridge we have the four-mile bridge at Krotz Springs,” said Mallett.
For up-to-date information on road closures visit 511LA.org. You also can use your smartphone apps like Waze and Google Maps for rerouting guidance.
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