Owen County Commissioners declared an emergency this week after the highway superintendent deemed a bridge on Porter Ridge Road dangerous.
Superintendent Greg Melton says a citizen contacted him last Friday night and informed him a car hit the structure.
“I found the bridge to be fracture critical which means it was in several different issues that needed addressed,” he says. “I called down an engineer, an engineer looked at it on Monday and said the weight limit needed to be dropped four tons so traffic couldn’t travel.”
While the structure acts as a bridge, it doesn’t meet the 20-foot length requirement necessary to be inspected regularly.
Commissioners are planning to select a contractor to build an aluminum box culvert on the bridge at a meeting Thursday.
The project is expected to cost $58,000, but that doesn’t include the cost of demolishing the previous bridge and the installation of the new box culvert.
