On Tuesday afternoon, Ocean City Emergency Services Director Joe Theobald came before the Mayor and City Council to give an overview of the process that took place Saturday when the Route 50 drawbridge became stuck in the open position for five hours causing nightmare traffic backups.
The drawbridge opened at its scheduled opening of 2:55 on Saturday afternoon. At that time, a storm was approaching Ocean City, and the beaches had been cleared sending motorists out onto Coastal Highway.
“There are number of things that took place … the failure was both mechanical and electrical. A machinery support beam that is an I-beam of about 18 inches by 54 inches long had some section loss, which in plain term is it had rusting on it,” Theobald said. “That caused the beam to snap and twist out of alignment, which then caused the limit switch for the bridge that controls when the bridge is placed down and showing its closed and ready for traffic to fail. The bridge tender certainly understood the bridge was not seated properly because when they tried to lower it after its scheduled opening the western stand stayed approximately four feet up in the air.”
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10 comments:
wow steel rusts next to salt air/water. who would ever have thunk it
First of all I will say that congratulations on doing their job? I don't think so! Second of all a critical beam rusted to the point of failure.
An once of prevention , inspecting the structure would have prevented this.
Here we see the ignorance of local government.
Whoever is in charge of this bridge inspection should be fired and fined.
Of course we know that won't happen , he will receive a medal for his valor .
This post has already started the pat on the back for whoever.
Again Democrats must have wrote this story to give themselves a pat on the back because common since would have had the bridge closed with in the hour not 5 hours later!! and then the trouble shooting would have began after mid night to correct the problems!
Folks that why you have hand cranks on the bridge!! Look at all the summer transplants you have P O now they will get the UN involved to solve this problem
Pat self on back.
I agree 100% someone needs to be fired imagine if that bridge would have been up then collapsed on to a boat and killed people???
5:16, that would be "common cents" and "beganned".
And "hand cranks"? Are they there to "un twist" the steel beams whenever they need it?
Have no idea what that last sentence even refers to.
Lol, love to see the "in sight" portrayed here! Maybe the Town of OC needs to hire this bridge inspector!
6:08 Good one.
ANY delay would have been unacceptable. So, was there no Plan?
People seem to avoid this fact.
5:16 so what if the bridge got closed and fell in the water, common sense says inspect it first so there wasn't any casualties. They did the right thing.
The one thing I don't understand is why the part needed was stored in Annapolis? If they would have had the part stored locally then it could have saved hours and hours of waiting.
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