Renovation of the Broad Street Bridge in downtown Rochester was halted today after a 20-foot-long section of the pedestrian walkway and railing broke off and fell into the Genesee River.
Another 80 feet of the concrete wall along the north sidewalk on the bridge flopped over…and was being held on only by the steel rebar. A red steel scaffold on the north side of the bridge was knocked askew.
City engineer Jim McIntosh says that entire section of the bridge was supposed to be torn out, but in a less exciting way. He says work crews were removing the top layers of concrete from the bridge deck between 8 and 9 this morning when they heard a rumbling sound and backed off the bridge. Shortly after that, the whole section gave way. Nobody was hurt.
The Broad Street Bridge is currently undergoing a $4 million renovation project. The part that fell was built in the last renovation, about 1972.
The project design engineers are looking at what happened and will sit down with officials on Monday about how to proceed. For now, McIntosh says they’ll probably cut the dangling section loose and drop it into the river as well.