Several state lawmakers Friday raised concerns about the Arkansas Department of Transportation's bridge inspection program as work got underway to repair the closed Interstate 40 bridge between Arkansas and Tennessee.
They grilled department Director Lorie Tudor a day after the department confirmed that the bridge inspector fired Monday for failing to discover a crack in the bridge was also responsible for overseeing inspections of nine "fracture critical" bridges throughout Arkansas.
Tudor repeatedly told lawmakers that department officials are doing everything they need to do at this point.
One of the nine bridges is the Hernando de Soto bridge that crosses the Mississippi River into Memphis and has been closed since a routine inspection May 11 found a significant crack that experts say should have been detected earlier.
Now-former bridge inspector Monty Frazier led a team that missed the developing fracture in a steel support beam in consecutive annual inspections in September 2019 and September 2020.
Three of the other bridges that Frazier oversaw are in Fort Smith, and the rest are in Des Arc, Eureka Springs, Helena-West Helena, Little Rock and Newport, according to the department.
In response to a question from Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, Tudor said the agency was reviewing all of the inspections Frazier conducted over the past year.
"They are underway right now, and we will report to the committee what we find ... if there is anything that we find," she told the Legislative Council.
State Rep. Deborah Ferguson, D-West Memphis, said "I am concerned that we, for 10 years, worried about the integrity of I-55."
"I was really surprised that I-40 was the bridge to go first," she said.
The traffic volume on the I-40 bridge to Memphis ranges up from about 41,000 vehicles daily, according to the Arkansas Department of Transportation. Much of the traffic is long-haul trucks carrying freight between Memphis and Dallas. The 3.3-mile, six-lane bridge first opened in 1973.
The Interstate 55 bridge between Memphis and West Memphis is now the alternative route used by much of the usual I-40 traffic. The I-55 bridge opened in 1949. Together, the two spans carried approximately 80,000 vehicles a day over the river until the I-40 crossing was closed last week.
Besides I-55, the closest bridge over the Mississippi River is U.S. 49 through Helena-West Helena, about 75 miles south of Memphis.
Avoiding the closed bridge is raising transportation costs for private industry. The Arkansas Trucking Association has estimated that rerouting traffic will cost $2.4 million a day.
This week, highway officials declined to give a solid timeline for when the I-40 bridge will reopen, suggesting that it could take "several months."
Kiewit, the company selected by Tennessee officials to repair the bridge, started work Friday building a temporary platform from which workers can begin bridge repairs.
The Tennessee Department of Transportation developed a two-phase repair plan. In phase one, engineers will install steel plates on each side of the fractured beam to hold equipment necessary for the repairs. In phase two, engineers will remove and replace the damaged piece of steel.
Installation of the phase one steel plates is expected to begin this weekend, Tennessee Transportation Department spokeswoman Nichole Lawrence said Friday.
As for the I-55 bridge, Tudor said no structural problems had been found on it.
"But to instill public confidence we've asked [the Tennessee Department of Transportation] to come behind us to do another inspection immediately," she said. That department hasn't found any problems, so far, she said.
"It is ongoing, so any concerns that you have now, or that constituents have or anyone driving over that bridge will be relieved," she added.
Rep. Fran Cavenaugh, R-Walnut Ridge, said Frazier was responsible for teaching other department employees how to inspect bridges.
"What are you going to do to give the citizens of Arkansas some type of reassurance that there is going to be a way to check these bridges to make sure that they are safe?" Cavenaugh asked.
In response, Tudor said the agency is doing everything it needs to to relieve fears.
"We are going to make those employees understand the correct way to inspect bridges," she said. "We have asked federal highway [administration officials] to come in and review our processes. This has been turned over to the [U.S. Department of Transportation] office of inspector general to do a through investigation.
"We put into place everything we know to do at this point in time to make sure everything this employee has done is addressed, not only from training employees but also from inspecting bridges. We cannot go any further than where we are at right now."
The Arkansas Department of Transportation is going to hire a consultant to "help us with quality assurance and quality control," she said.
Tudor said "all these things are going to be into place, and it will cost the state something because we are going to really beef up our inspection program."
She acknowledged that she didn't know Friday what it will cost the Transportation Department.
"We all need to start focusing on I-40 because that's what is important right now, getting the bridge repaired, getting it back open to traffic, making sure traffic is flowing right now and minimizing the pain as much as possible," Tudor said. "Then once we get it fixed, figure out what the failure was, what caused that failure."
Cavenaugh agreed that the I-40 bridge needs to be repaired to get traffic flowing because it is a vital place for commerce.
"But the citizens of Arkansas have a lot of other bridges beyond the I-40 bridge that they need confidence that these are going to be addressed," she said. "As someone that represents the citizens of Arkansas, they have a right to know that you are going to address all the other bridges that might be a concern."
In response, Tudor said "I don't know how to say it more clearly."
"That is exactly what we are doing," she said. "We are doing everything we can to restore confidence in our program.
"I don't know how many times I need to say it, but I promise everyone in this room we are taking care in the failure in the process, and once we figure it all out we'll report back to you."
There is still a lot to unfold, she said.
"There still may be other people that need to reprimanded or held accountable," Tudor said. "But we are doing everything in our power. From this point forward, we need to work on the I-40 bridge and restoring confidence. We understand that."
State Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, said a consultant that the Legislature hired in 2019 to review the Arkansas Department of Transportation's operations reported that the department had a lack of processes in place "almost across the board."
"There was not a mechanism of how those items were reported or reviewed or checks," he said "There was not balances."
Dismang, who has been a critic at times of the department in the past several years, said "I hope it is not just on this maintenance side or this review side of our bridges that we are going to hone in and hopefully refine our processes."
He recalled that Transportation Department officials repeatedly told lawmakers that they were developing the needed processes, in response to the issues raised by the consultant.
"My biggest fear is that we are not going to have the follow-through to see those things accomplished, and I hope this legislative body will hold ADOT accountable," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Tess Vrbin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.