Philo Bridge Could See Future Repairs

The Philo-Duncan Falls Bridge officially reopened Monday but Muskingum County Engineer Doug Davis said ‘there’s still work to be done.’

Two repairs made to the structure made it necessary to remove the deck of the bridge after a perforation,or small hole in the steel, failed, becoming large enough for the emergency closing.

Davis said monthly inspections are performed but the sudden failure wasn’t expected and could have been caused by traffic over the load limit passing over the bridge. He said there are more perforations on the bridge that are being monitored closely which could mean more repairs and more closings.

“This is not something that we could have forecasted,” said Davis. “Can I totally forecast the next time we’re going to have to close the structure? No. I can’t do that. But we’ll try to do it as diligently as we can just like we did this time. ”

More work is scheduled this winter, weather permitting, but it will take place from underneath the structure meaning only daytime closures. Patches will be placed on existing perforations in the steel to keep them from failing. Davis said it’s up to the community to do their part to preserve the integrity of the structure by only passing over in vehicles that don’t exceed the load limit.

“If they don’t follow the load limit the bridge is going to fatigue and we may have a localized failure like we did and we will have to emergency close the structure and work on it like we did,” said Davis.

The bridge is load limited for 15 tons. School buses can cross but there should not be any dump trucks, semi-trucks, or any vehicle exceeding the legal load limit.