It was just announced that the I 40 bridge between Ark. and Memphis has been shut down. They found a crack in the bridge. No word on how long it will be shut down.
Probably not. This bridge isn't really an old bridge, compared to many others. It does get a lot of traffic though.
It will cause major problems. I don't even know if the old bridge is still usable. I 40 is a major east, west interstate highway.
Well, that's scary. I remember in late December, 1966, when I was a student at Wayne State Univ. in Detroit that I use to travel from Virginia through W. Va., on up through Ohio, and I crossed the Ohio river from Pt. Pleasant, W. Va. to Gallipolis, Ohio on highway 35. On my way home for the holidays, there was a red light a few yards onto the bridge just before crossing over from Ohio. I noticed that the bridge seemed to be very shaky, and there were trucks idling and the bridge seemed to be in cadence with the trucks. I felt very unsafe. Exactly 1 year later, on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed under the weight of rush-hour traffic, resulting in the deaths of 46 people. I've never forgotten about that, and I've been very thankful that it did not happen to me, and also very sorry for the ones it happened to. There was even a movie made about it, starring Richard Gere.
I gotta think closing and portion of any major highway like that is going to have far-reaching effects on food and other supply lines, in addition to regional work commutes.
For the curious, here are the I-40 and I-55 bridges crossing the Mississippi River between Memphis and Arkansas:
My grandmother was only a couple of months old when her mother was crossing a bridge. Her mother had her tucked into her coat to guard her from the cold. As Great-Grandma crossed the bridge, it started to collapse. She started running but the bridge was tilting. A man grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to safety, dislocating her shoulder. As she was helped to her feet, my grandmother fell out of her coat onto the ground. The man screamed, thinking that she had just given birth (to a baby fully clothed, of course, but nobody was exactly thinking straight at the moment). A newspaper reporter had showed up and took pictures and the next day a story was in the newspaper with the headline, "Baby Born Twice, Second Time on Bridge". Grandma used to show me the article and we'd have a good laugh.
It showed on the news that there wasn't JUST A CRACK. A main beam was broke and had separated. It is VERY lucky, that this was discovered in time to prevent a MAJOR catastrophe. This was the first inspection since 2019.