AVOID THE TRAFFIC
Highway officials suggest the following detours while the interstate is closed:
SB I-75 Traffic, North of I-275: Traffic is detoured to I-275 westbound to I-75 (in Kentucky).
SB I-75 Traffic, South of I-275: Traffic is detoured to SR-562 eastbound to I-71.
SB I-75 Traffic, South of SR-562: Traffic is diverted to I-74 westbound.
EB I-74 Traffic, West of I-275: Traffic is detoured to I-275 southbound to I-75 (in Kentucky).
EB I-74 Traffic, East of I-275: Traffic is diverted to I-75 northbound or Central Parkway.
Travel on a major strip of southbound Interstate 75 just north of downtown Cincinnati was shutdown Tuesday after a bridge collapsed, killing a 35-year-old Kentucky man and leaving another man injured.
Kokosing Construction Inc. crews were dismantling an old, unused bridge exit when the ramp fell onto lanes of the highway around 10:30 p.m. Monday. The contractor’s employee Brandon Carl was killed from the fall of the collapse but police and fire crews were unable to recover his body until just before 3 a.m. Tuesday. The highway reopened nearly a day later around 10 p.m. Tuesday.
An estimated 130,000 vehicles that pass through that stretch of I-75 each day.
“This tragedy was a result of a work site incident,” Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black said during a news conference Tuesday held near the highway. “It was a demolition job underway.”
A truck driver, who was passing through the highway, was also injured in the bridge collapse. He was transported to a nearby hospital but officials did not immediately release the driver’s name or condition.
“A matter of seconds and his fate would probably have been different,” said Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffery Blackwell Blackwell said. “There’s several hundreds of tons of concrete that fell on that interstate.”
Early Tuesday, Blackwell said it was expected to take at least 48 hours to reopen the highway, but crews worked to get the debris cleared faster and the highway reopened.
The demolition is part of a three-year, $90.7 million overhaul of a portion of the highway meant to create a new viaduct and is set to be completed in 2016. Highway officials couldn’t immediately say if Monday’s collapsed bridge would delay the project or what kind of impact it might have on construction costs. The company will likely be responsible for any extra costs though, a state highway official said.
Federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration investigators were on the scene through the afternoon Tuesday to gather evidence for their inspection.
State highway officials said during a news conference that construction crews routinely leave highway underpasses open while dismantling bridges as they did Monday night.
“Typically, we will not close a bridge or lanes underneath a bridge,” Gary Middleton, the acting deputy director of Ohio Department of Transportation said.
As of last year, 8 percent of Ohio’s bridges were structurally unsafe, but the bridge that collapsed Monday night had most recently received a “not structurally obsolete” rating from inspectors.
Middleton wouldn’t speculate what caused Monday’s accident during a news conference.
Demolition projects can be very tricky, Montgomery County Engineer Paul Gruner told this newspaper.
“There will likely be months and months of study before anyone knows what happened,” Gruner said. “Demolition is the least precise of what we do in the construction business. Demolition is a dangerous business and less precise than new construction.”
Kokosing Construction, which is based out of Fredericktown, Ohio, has won a number of high-dollar contracts for state construction work. At nearly $225 million, it was one of the highest paid companies for contract work in the state last year, according to information from the state’s treasurer.
OSHA investigators have inspected Kokosing Construction sites across the country and the company has received two citations — one at a Michigan work site and another at a West Virginia one — since 2010. None of them appeared to be related to fatal accidents.
OSHA frequently inspects construction companies, said OSHA’s Cincinnati Area Director Bill Wilkerson.
“It’s not unusual to have a lot of inspections, especially a company like Kokosing,” Wilkerson said. “That we occasionally find a problem is indicative that they’re not perfect — but nobody is.”
Both U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and Sen. Sherrod Brown told this newspaper they were concerned about Monday’s accident.
“It’s important that a thorough investigation of this accident is conducted so that we can learn from this loss and prevent it from happening in the future,” Brown said in a statement.
Staff Writer Steve Bennish contributed to this report.
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