A bridge in Bay County, Michigan, has been shut down after collapsing onto Interstate 75.
The aging Mackinaw Road bridge was set to be repaired in 2019, but was in worse shape than Michigan Dept. of Transportation officials realized. On Sunday afternoon, a section of the pavement collapsed onto the highway below, leaving a 5 by 4 foot hole in the middle of the bridge.
No one was hurt when the bridge collapsed because the debris fell directly onto the highway median. The bridge has since been closed to all traffic.
Michigan DOT representative Jocelyn Hall says multiple factors led to the collapse.
“Age and weather are probably the two biggest contributors so this particular bridge was constructed in 1967, it has at least a solid 50 years of service under its belt,” she said. “The condition of the bridge deck has been really closely monitored over the last couple years because we were aware that it was going to need to be replaced sometime in the near future so it was something we were keeping an eye on.”
The bridge was listed as “structurally deficient” by MDOT back in March of 2015, but a complete reconstruction was not set to take place until 2019.
The bridge will be closed for at least 2 weeks to repair the surface. Despite the partial collapse, MDOT says the date for the full reconstruction will not pushed up and will still take place in 2019.