Pottawatomie County Public Works officials are working to replace a rural bridge following a structural failure recently
Interim Public Works Administrator Dustin Newman told county commissioners Monday the failure was on an old stone bridge on Victory Road, an unpaved county road, just south of the Excelsor Road intersection, near Onaga.
“It washed out the road. We had a citizen call us and let us know. We found out shortly after we closed the road there’s a business down there, so we worked as fast as we could to get our temporary bridge up, so we have the road back open to one lane until we get the materials in to replace it,” he said.
The closure reportedly impacts one business, a hair salon in the area. Newman says the original abutment was in two pieces with stable ground underneath it.
“When they pulled it, started pulling the top off of it, the concrete crumbled. What they found was that they used large rocks for filler in a lot of the concrete, so it’s not really structurally sound,” he said.
Newman says the replacement structure will be completed within about three weeks.
