20 area bridges closed or downgraded
Tony Herrman
therrman@hastingstribune.com

Tony Herrman/Tribune Clay County Highway Department employees Jim Ochsner and Mike Baxa nail down the deck of a bridge northeast of Sutton Wednesday.

As state-hired consultants traverse the state inspecting timber and fractured critical bridges, most area counties have at least a few bridges that require some work.
The 2007 collapse of a major highway bridge in Minneapolis spurred all county bridges in the nation to be inspected every two years and rated for the weight they can bear, Moe Jamshidi, the state’s acting bridge engineer, said in an Associated Press article.
“We have been load rating over 15,000 bridges over the last two years,” Jamshidi told the Lincoln Journal Star in September. “And by the end of the year we’re supposed to have all the bridges load rated.”
Among the eight Nebraska counties in Tribland, more than 20 bridges have either been closed or had loads reduced following these inspections.

To read more, see Saturday's Hastings Tribune or the Tribune e-edition.