The Napier Avenue bridge over the St. Joseph River could be closed until August. Berrien County Road Department engineer Kevin Stack tells WSJM News the bridge was closed to all traffic Tuesday when crews doing a rehabilitation project on the Miami Road side of the bridge were sandblasting away rust from the rocker arms and bridge beams. They exposed more deterioration than anticipated, leaving a gap between the rocker arms and beams and possibly allowing the bridge to move.
“After further assessment, we noticed that we were losing contact between those two elements all down the face of the bridge,” Stack said. “So, we decided to close it indefinitely until we could get a temporary fix in place for EMS and police, and then explore possible temporary fixes for normal traffic flow. But at this time, we are not confident that we’re going to be able to put traffic back on that bridge until we have it repaired permanently.”
Stack says the rehabilitation project on the bridge will be adjusted to repair the issue.
“The bridge did not collapse, the bridge did not move. What we saw could lead to that, so we took the proactive approach of shutting the bridge down before we saw any type of failure or collapse.”
Stack says if the bridge had collapsed, the Miami side would have fallen about three feet. Since the rehabilitation project will continue through August, that’s now possibly when the bridge will reopen. Crews were back on it as of Wednesday afternoon.
